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Chuck would need a ladder if his bullets were going to go above 10,000 feet. He'd be more likely to shoot himself.
Chinese spy balloon over US
- Thread starter foxhole
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Here's Why Planes Fly at 36,000 Feet
Everything you've ever wanted to know about cruising altitude, including why planes fly at 36,000 feet.
If there is, it floats by every bloody morning!
I'm waiting for the UK to find one - less chance as we are rather smaller than the others. 
EU maybe? Russia - pretty big.Photo of the big chinese one being recovered available now. The latest - nothing yet.
I suspect the main problem really is the ability to keep balloons up for very long periods of time rather than just rise until they burst.
USA's reckons it's all about testing their response. Spying may get added when they see what they carry. The things aren't really steerable but can probably follow say the jet stream to some extent and that bounces about at times.
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I was thinking someone was attempting a Darwin Award after these two:
darwinawards.com
Particularly when the intercept costs more than the balloon. (tracking, intercept, missile etc.) got to be 100k a pop.
There is analysis saying that can plot very accurate courses as the winds go in different directions depending on altitude.
2008 Darwin Award WINNER: Santa Ignorância
Darwin Award: 2008 WINNER. Santa Ignorância : A Catholic priest ascended toward heaven on a host of helium balloons, in homage to Lawn Chair Larry. Sitting for 19 hours in a lawn chair is not a trivial matter...
darwinawards.com
Particularly when the intercept costs more than the balloon. (tracking, intercept, missile etc.) got to be 100k a pop.
There is analysis saying that can plot very accurate courses as the winds go in different directions depending on altitude.
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Does anyone really think that spy balloons haven't been used by several countries, for decades?
Someone asked me about what could be done/seen. There's quite a bit of general knowledge if you're sort-of interested.
Wind directions changing with altitude, and sometimes time of day, or as fronts come through, are pretty well understood. Ask a pilot. And there are masses of odd things like balloons being sent up - pilots get notices called NOTAMS to avoid them.
The image resolution you can get, goes with distance, wavelength, and diameter of the lens you're using - basic optics (lens N.A.) . You can simulate a big lens by taking a load of images from within an area, (ask an astronomer using an array telescope) which a balloon would travel across slowly. From those you can also get a 3D image. Radar images are really good too. With a reported payload of 900kg, there's scope for a small propelling device to adjust the position in still air.
No you cannot read a newspaper from a satellite. Think football sized detail, or golf ball, at the very extreme extreme, with the fanciest systems and super-resolution software. Balloon proximity to earth helps but satellites do have an advantage - they can unfold a bigger lens/antenna many (tens of?) metres wide. When Hubble went up there were leaks of a military one a bit smaller. Called something like Dumpy Hubble, pointing down.
There must be a limit to what you can arrange to work on a balloon. A few metres I suppose if it's "bus" sized.
Balloons stay up until something brings them down. The gas will expand as it rises and fill more balloon envelope. If you let the envelope expand without it popping or leaking, it stays up. You could dump your secrets in the sea, eventually.
With the right equipment you could characterise gamma ray emissions looking for radioactive sources, or chemical emissions, or of course communications emissions. Some of that kit is, afaik, too big, but I daresay it's been reduced in size by a lot since I saw it. They put mass spec's in the moon landers after all. Satellites remotely track emissions of complex gases like CFCs, and so on.
The yanks at least, have very competent drones which go to 65000 feet (e.g. Boeing). I imagine some stubby haired USAF geeks getting excited about designing an ACME UFO PEEPER SCOOPER, to retrieve things in one piece. That would be quite a fun project.
Someone asked me about what could be done/seen. There's quite a bit of general knowledge if you're sort-of interested.
Wind directions changing with altitude, and sometimes time of day, or as fronts come through, are pretty well understood. Ask a pilot. And there are masses of odd things like balloons being sent up - pilots get notices called NOTAMS to avoid them.
The image resolution you can get, goes with distance, wavelength, and diameter of the lens you're using - basic optics (lens N.A.) . You can simulate a big lens by taking a load of images from within an area, (ask an astronomer using an array telescope) which a balloon would travel across slowly. From those you can also get a 3D image. Radar images are really good too. With a reported payload of 900kg, there's scope for a small propelling device to adjust the position in still air.
No you cannot read a newspaper from a satellite. Think football sized detail, or golf ball, at the very extreme extreme, with the fanciest systems and super-resolution software. Balloon proximity to earth helps but satellites do have an advantage - they can unfold a bigger lens/antenna many (tens of?) metres wide. When Hubble went up there were leaks of a military one a bit smaller. Called something like Dumpy Hubble, pointing down.
There must be a limit to what you can arrange to work on a balloon. A few metres I suppose if it's "bus" sized.
Balloons stay up until something brings them down. The gas will expand as it rises and fill more balloon envelope. If you let the envelope expand without it popping or leaking, it stays up. You could dump your secrets in the sea, eventually.
With the right equipment you could characterise gamma ray emissions looking for radioactive sources, or chemical emissions, or of course communications emissions. Some of that kit is, afaik, too big, but I daresay it's been reduced in size by a lot since I saw it. They put mass spec's in the moon landers after all. Satellites remotely track emissions of complex gases like CFCs, and so on.
The yanks at least, have very competent drones which go to 65000 feet (e.g. Boeing). I imagine some stubby haired USAF geeks getting excited about designing an ACME UFO PEEPER SCOOPER, to retrieve things in one piece. That would be quite a fun project.
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Yes they really can. Many years ago there was a documentary on your tellyvideos that demonstrated that fact. They zoomed down to chap reading a newspaper in Red Square Moscow.
It could have been faked, it could quite easily have been faked, but it wasn't. What most folk forgot about the next day was actually a message to the Russkies that "this is what we can do". Coupled to the fact that "ALL COMMUNICATIONS ALL OF THE TIME" are monitored & recorded by what I still call "ECHELON" but is now fragmented into other project titles . . . . Makes a simple weather balloon just that "A WEATHER BALLOON".
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No they really can't.
As I said, best resolution is of the order of golf-ball size, nowhere near reading the newspaper, which would need sub-millimetre. You could see a newspaper and make out a headline, if you post-processed the image with deconvolution software.
If you run the numbers you'll find you need a satellite hundreds of metres wide (or an array) , at low orbit, to do better.
You may be thinking of something like these "leaks":
Illegally released KH-11 'early block' product images from the 80s: http://fas.org/irp/imint/kh11m_1.htm http://fas.org/irp/imint/kh11m_2.htm http://fas.org/irp/imint/kh11m_3.htm . Full resolution product could see man sized objects easily. http://www.americaspace.com/?p=20825
Gone are the days of leaving your U235 enrichment centrifuge in the open to be recognised. Other methods are used to find them.
Technology isn't the limiting factor, it's the wavelength of light. It's like trying to feel for a needle with boxing gloves on. The wide-field satellite is analogous to feeling it from several directions at once. A slow-moving balloon can simulate a wide field, but usually only in one direction (the one the balloon's moving in). If you can get your balloon to move in a carefully measured circle, then it can do better.
There's a load of crap on the net about decryption abilities too. Encryption is massively easier than decryption, so it depends who's trying. Even quite simple, free encryption embarrassed the NSA. They tried to make more than so-many bits illegal, because they couldn't decrypt it in reasonable time. Now everything's multiplied, by a factor of 2^128+, or keys of 2048 bits last time I saw, then TLS... Whatsapp and Telegram are a PITA for the NSA. Imagine the number of messages. It's easier if you have one target, but then if he uses a cipher, you spend forever to get something like "Blue orchid smiled gibbon 3849".
Ed Snowden said, you can't beat the math. But if the NSA wanted to be in your computer/router/opsystem etc though, then they do have ways.
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