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It looks like the large size is mostly just solar panels (I'm assuming that's what they were; they could have been 'sails' to help steer it) and their scaffoldi

It looks like the large size is mostly just solar panels (I'm assuming that's what they were; they could have been 'sails' to help steer it) and their scaffolding. From some of the available photos there's two wings, each with eight panels. There's a tradeoff between the weight of the solar panels vs simply using batteries (though batteries don't like the cold, and solar panels do), so I think maybe they were hoping the thing would stay aloft for a long time? My guess is that the actual package of equipment - batteries and sensors - is quite small. Maybe a telescope and gyro stabilizer or gimbal was part of the setup. Insulation probably bulked it up quite a bit; it's very, very cold at that altitude. I'd be curious what sort of uplink they were using, assuming the thing was actually fully functional as a spying device. I'd say there is a decent chance it was largely a dummy, designed to see what our reaction would be. I don't particularly like the precedent we just set. There's no evidence it was a weapon, its flight path was easily tracked and slow so our military could hardly argue it was a surveillance threat especially compared to satellites, it's well outside commercial aviation flight ranges. If they want to send balloons over us at 80,000 feet...let them? Who cares? They can task commercial satellites and get as good or better imagery. We can hardly point fingers. The U2 flew at similar altitudes, we still use them to this day, and they almost certainly contain far more powerful spying equipment.

LarryMullins 4y ago
> solar panels (I'm assuming that's what they were; they could have been 'sails' to help steer it) Or perhaps both at once. I really hope the details of this craft are published, the machine nerd in me needs to know.
humanizersequel 4y ago
>They can task commercial satellites and get as good or better imagery. Is that true? Just from quickly poking around, LEO satellites seem to orbit at about triple the height, moving far faster than a balloon lazily floating along the jetstream. Probably can use a larger variety of instruments as well.
- SergeAx 4y ago
  > about triple the height Hundred times the height, to be exact.
- bagels 4y ago
  LEO (300-1500km) is much higher than the apparent 60,000 ft altitude of this balloon (18km).
  - humanizersequel 4y ago
    I'm mildly embarrassed to say I didn't even notice the discrepancy in units. Obviously, 200,000 ft (or 300k, but 200 was the figure I saw first) isn't really plausibly high enough to constitute orbit.
WalterBright 4y ago
> they could have been 'sails' to help steer it Sails are useless in a balloon. The only way to steer a balloon without a propeller is to raise and lower its altitude seeking a wind blowing in the right direction.
- cesis 4y ago
  Why not? Add a fin to a baloon and you can steer it. And once the baloon can hold direction in the wind with the help of the fin, you can add sail to actually get some propulsion in direction other than wind.
  - mike_d 4y ago
    The problem at 60k feet is actually you are above the weather and don't have a ton of wind to work with. Moving up and down in the minor wind currents is far more efficient energy wise and practically.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The balloon moves with the wind. You cannot steer it because from the point of view of the balloon it is not moving. There is no keel on a balloon. Without a keel, one is only going downwind.
    - hardlianotion 4y ago
      I think you should be able to on a wind current boundary
    - tomcam 4y ago
      > from the point of view of the balloon it is not moving. Mind == blown* *Sincere, but pun intended
    - theteapot 4y ago
      Wind is still flowing over the balloon and able to generate a steering force.
WillPostForFood 4y ago
especially compared to satellites It is a lot easier to take pictures and collect data at 60,000 ft (balloon) than from a satellite in low earth orbit, which is closer to 6,000,000 ft.
- lettergram 4y ago
  They also could have had ground penetrating radar. Note the path of the balloon was over the US missile silos https://geo-matching.com/content/new-approach-to-use-ground-penetrating-radar-gpr-integrated-with-a-drone-uav https://geo-matching.com/content/new-approach-to-use-ground-... Outside the atmosphere you would not be able to do it
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    If that thing had a radar strong enough to see through dirt from 50,000ft, it should have also been causing havoc to all sorts of electrical equipment too.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
      I know nothing of radar, but could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming? Couldn’t the radar also be switched off over the majority of inconsequential areas?
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming? Yes, SAR [1]. [1] https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-s...
        4gotunameagain 4y ago
        SAR is just a method to virtually increase the aperture of the antenna with a moving platform, it is unrelated to the localisation of the beam
NegativeLatency 4y ago
It could’ve actually been a “science experiment” just launched at the behest of the military as a test like you say. So they’d have plausible deniability like the “fishing boats” in the South China Sea
- ilostmyshoes 4y ago
  [dead]
- vkou 4y ago
  Why would there need to be any plausible deniability for flying a spy aircraft over another country? The U-2 spy plane did just that, as did Project Genetrix (Unmanned surveillance balloons), and then later, the SR-71 Blackbird, and as much as the Soviets complained, complaining and shooting at them was pretty much all they could do. They shot down/recovered so many Project Genetrix balloons, in fact, that their left-over radiation-hardened film was re-used by the Soviet space program in their Luna 3 Moon probe. All the sound and fury around this seems to be a serious case of 'the shoe is now on our foot'.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    > Why would there need to be any plausible deniability for flying a spy aircraft over another country? Because they’re denying it. Presumably, they’d want their denial to be plausible.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    Is the US supposed to not complain now just because the USSR got to complain first? If something flies over your country, you get to loudly complain about it and shoot at it. If you are able to hit it too, good for you.
sandworm101 4y ago
When an aircraft doesnt have a transponder, doesnt respond to radio calls, no flight plan on file, and seems to be adrift, it is a hazard to navigation irrespective of altitide. Such things get intercepted and, if in any way dangerous, are shot down. Post-9/11, there are even protocols for shooting down unresponsive airliners.
- angry_octet 4y ago
  Name one plane that flies at more than 60,000 feet, I'll wait.
  - bitcurious 4y ago
    If you believe the Chinese officials, they had lost control of the balloon. Things that go up must famously go down, though that's not their department said Wernher Von Braun.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      It's a bit strange how they are simultaneously upset that their balloon got shot down and claiming they had lost control of it.
      - ddalex 4y ago
        The "upset" part is a defensive attack, they expect to avoid rebuffs of violating airspace by being very upset in the first place.
      - dragonelite 4y ago
        Well it gives a good excuse to shoot down US spy balloons or planes. The precedence has been set, and the snowball continue to roll downwards.
        toss1 4y ago
        That precedence was set way back in the late 1950s when the Soviet Union started shooting at US U-2 spy planes, and especially in 1960 when they finally succeeded in shooting down the US U-2 spy plane with pilot Gary Powers. This overflight was termed by the Soviets as an "Act of aggression". This Chinese incident is no less an act of aggression, and merely continues the precedent. If the Chinese really wanted it considered otherwise because they had actually lost control of the device, they could have easily warned us of the problem and requested coordinated assistance in recovering their device (which would of course allow us to examine it). The PRC govt did no such thing. And the critics complaining about not shooting it down sooner are ignoring two key things. First, the payload was 2-4 school-busses in length, and dropping such a thing from 12+ miles up in a random location even in sparsely populated areas is a ridiculous hazard. Second, we can be quite confident that the US military could neutralize any data collection or transmission during the transit, and the shoot-down over our waters eliminated the possibility of PRC recovering any stored data.
aragonite 4y ago
> I don't particularly like the precedent we just set especially in view of the fact that the upper limit of sovereign airspace is not defined by international law. In fact there are proposals to treat the 18-160km zone as a transitional region of reduced sovereignty akin to EEZs. https://iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2021/07/IAASS-near-space-the-quest-for-a-new-legal-frontier.pdf https://iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2... > Legally however, it is an indistinct region where it is not clear whether the operations that take place are covered by aviation or space conventions and treaties, in particular with reference to the freedom of overflight that applies to space orbital operations Also: > Although outer space is free, if states are allowed to claim vertical sovereignty up to the point where orbital dynamics are possible, other states will be precluded from having free access to space > John A. Johnson, General Counsel of [NASA] and [of USAF], said in 1964 "there should therefore be no legal basis for protesting, merely on grounds of unpermitted presence, the overflight of national territory by ascending and descending spacecraft, regardless of altitude." https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=jalc https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&con... Also see: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/43439/is-there-a-height-limit-to-national-airspace https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/43439/is-there-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty
- prox 4y ago
  While that’s an admirable goal, in practice this is an operation above or in US airspace, which seemed to be unannounced by another nation state. There is little wiggle room for an honest blunder. China could have send out a press release their balloon was out of control or whatever.
  - aragonite 4y ago
    I agree the visibility makes it worse, but my sense is that stratospheric balloon overflight is something that happens fairly frequently and most of the time does not cause diplomatic incidents (which explains why we heard nothing about it the 4-5 times it happened in the past several years). Another instance is this Google balloon that recently fell out of the sky in the Congo: https://twitter.com/kambale/status/1621811081206439937 https://twitter.com/kambale/status/1621811081206439937
misja111 4y ago
I don't know why you are downvoted but I agree with your point that the shooting down feels a bit like an overreaction. For instance, the Pentagon has just reported that several Chinese balloons have been crossing US airspace in the recent years [1], also during Trump presidency. These were not shut down, they were not even reported at the time AFAIK. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-blame-biden-chinese-spy-balloon-crossed-into-us-trump-2023-2?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-blame-biden-ch...
Sakos 4y ago
> The U2 flew at similar altitudes, we still use them to this day, and they almost certainly contain far more powerful spying equipment. And if they could, other countries would love to shoot them out of the air and it would be fair. You don't put planes like the U2 in operation without being aware of the risks. I don't understand what you're trying to achieve by pointing that out.

LarryMullins 4y ago

> solar panels (I'm assuming that's what they were; they could have been 'sails' to help steer it) Or perhaps both at once. I really hope the details of this craft are published, the machine nerd in me needs to know.

humanizersequel 4y ago

>They can task commercial satellites and get as good or better imagery. Is that true? Just from quickly poking around, LEO satellites seem to orbit at about triple the height, moving far faster than a balloon lazily floating along the jetstream. Probably can use a larger variety of instruments as well.

SergeAx 4y ago
> about triple the height Hundred times the height, to be exact.
bagels 4y ago
LEO (300-1500km) is much higher than the apparent 60,000 ft altitude of this balloon (18km).
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  I'm mildly embarrassed to say I didn't even notice the discrepancy in units. Obviously, 200,000 ft (or 300k, but 200 was the figure I saw first) isn't really plausibly high enough to constitute orbit.

WalterBright 4y ago

> they could have been 'sails' to help steer it Sails are useless in a balloon. The only way to steer a balloon without a propeller is to raise and lower its altitude seeking a wind blowing in the right direction.

cesis 4y ago
Why not? Add a fin to a baloon and you can steer it. And once the baloon can hold direction in the wind with the help of the fin, you can add sail to actually get some propulsion in direction other than wind.
- mike_d 4y ago
  The problem at 60k feet is actually you are above the weather and don't have a ton of wind to work with. Moving up and down in the minor wind currents is far more efficient energy wise and practically.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The balloon moves with the wind. You cannot steer it because from the point of view of the balloon it is not moving. There is no keel on a balloon. Without a keel, one is only going downwind.
  - hardlianotion 4y ago
    I think you should be able to on a wind current boundary
  - tomcam 4y ago
    > from the point of view of the balloon it is not moving. Mind == blown* *Sincere, but pun intended
  - theteapot 4y ago
    Wind is still flowing over the balloon and able to generate a steering force.

WillPostForFood 4y ago

especially compared to satellites It is a lot easier to take pictures and collect data at 60,000 ft (balloon) than from a satellite in low earth orbit, which is closer to 6,000,000 ft.

lettergram 4y ago
They also could have had ground penetrating radar. Note the path of the balloon was over the US missile silos https://geo-matching.com/content/new-approach-to-use-ground-penetrating-radar-gpr-integrated-with-a-drone-uav https://geo-matching.com/content/new-approach-to-use-ground-... Outside the atmosphere you would not be able to do it
- sandworm101 4y ago
  If that thing had a radar strong enough to see through dirt from 50,000ft, it should have also been causing havoc to all sorts of electrical equipment too.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    I know nothing of radar, but could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming? Couldn’t the radar also be switched off over the majority of inconsequential areas?
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming? Yes, SAR [1]. [1] https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-s...
      - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
        SAR is just a method to virtually increase the aperture of the antenna with a moving platform, it is unrelated to the localisation of the beam

NegativeLatency 4y ago

It could’ve actually been a “science experiment” just launched at the behest of the military as a test like you say. So they’d have plausible deniability like the “fishing boats” in the South China Sea

ilostmyshoes 4y ago
[dead]
vkou 4y ago
Why would there need to be any plausible deniability for flying a spy aircraft over another country? The U-2 spy plane did just that, as did Project Genetrix (Unmanned surveillance balloons), and then later, the SR-71 Blackbird, and as much as the Soviets complained, complaining and shooting at them was pretty much all they could do. They shot down/recovered so many Project Genetrix balloons, in fact, that their left-over radiation-hardened film was re-used by the Soviet space program in their Luna 3 Moon probe. All the sound and fury around this seems to be a serious case of 'the shoe is now on our foot'.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  > Why would there need to be any plausible deniability for flying a spy aircraft over another country? Because they’re denying it. Presumably, they’d want their denial to be plausible.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  Is the US supposed to not complain now just because the USSR got to complain first? If something flies over your country, you get to loudly complain about it and shoot at it. If you are able to hit it too, good for you.

sandworm101 4y ago

When an aircraft doesnt have a transponder, doesnt respond to radio calls, no flight plan on file, and seems to be adrift, it is a hazard to navigation irrespective of altitide. Such things get intercepted and, if in any way dangerous, are shot down. Post-9/11, there are even protocols for shooting down unresponsive airliners.

angry_octet 4y ago
Name one plane that flies at more than 60,000 feet, I'll wait.
- bitcurious 4y ago
  If you believe the Chinese officials, they had lost control of the balloon. Things that go up must famously go down, though that's not their department said Wernher Von Braun.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    It's a bit strange how they are simultaneously upset that their balloon got shot down and claiming they had lost control of it.
    - ddalex 4y ago
      The "upset" part is a defensive attack, they expect to avoid rebuffs of violating airspace by being very upset in the first place.
    - dragonelite 4y ago
      Well it gives a good excuse to shoot down US spy balloons or planes. The precedence has been set, and the snowball continue to roll downwards.
      - toss1 4y ago
        That precedence was set way back in the late 1950s when the Soviet Union started shooting at US U-2 spy planes, and especially in 1960 when they finally succeeded in shooting down the US U-2 spy plane with pilot Gary Powers. This overflight was termed by the Soviets as an "Act of aggression". This Chinese incident is no less an act of aggression, and merely continues the precedent. If the Chinese really wanted it considered otherwise because they had actually lost control of the device, they could have easily warned us of the problem and requested coordinated assistance in recovering their device (which would of course allow us to examine it). The PRC govt did no such thing. And the critics complaining about not shooting it down sooner are ignoring two key things. First, the payload was 2-4 school-busses in length, and dropping such a thing from 12+ miles up in a random location even in sparsely populated areas is a ridiculous hazard. Second, we can be quite confident that the US military could neutralize any data collection or transmission during the transit, and the shoot-down over our waters eliminated the possibility of PRC recovering any stored data.

aragonite 4y ago

> I don't particularly like the precedent we just set especially in view of the fact that the upper limit of sovereign airspace is not defined by international law. In fact there are proposals to treat the 18-160km zone as a transitional region of reduced sovereignty akin to EEZs. https://iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2021/07/IAASS-near-space-the-quest-for-a-new-legal-frontier.pdf https://iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2... > Legally however, it is an indistinct region where it is not clear whether the operations that take place are covered by aviation or space conventions and treaties, in particular with reference to the freedom of overflight that applies to space orbital operations Also: > Although outer space is free, if states are allowed to claim vertical sovereignty up to the point where orbital dynamics are possible, other states will be precluded from having free access to space > John A. Johnson, General Counsel of [NASA] and [of USAF], said in 1964 "there should therefore be no legal basis for protesting, merely on grounds of unpermitted presence, the overflight of national territory by ascending and descending spacecraft, regardless of altitude." https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=jalc https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&con... Also see: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/43439/is-there-a-height-limit-to-national-airspace https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/43439/is-there-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty

prox 4y ago
While that’s an admirable goal, in practice this is an operation above or in US airspace, which seemed to be unannounced by another nation state. There is little wiggle room for an honest blunder. China could have send out a press release their balloon was out of control or whatever.
- aragonite 4y ago
  I agree the visibility makes it worse, but my sense is that stratospheric balloon overflight is something that happens fairly frequently and most of the time does not cause diplomatic incidents (which explains why we heard nothing about it the 4-5 times it happened in the past several years). Another instance is this Google balloon that recently fell out of the sky in the Congo: https://twitter.com/kambale/status/1621811081206439937 https://twitter.com/kambale/status/1621811081206439937

misja111 4y ago

I don't know why you are downvoted but I agree with your point that the shooting down feels a bit like an overreaction. For instance, the Pentagon has just reported that several Chinese balloons have been crossing US airspace in the recent years [1], also during Trump presidency. These were not shut down, they were not even reported at the time AFAIK. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-blame-biden-chinese-spy-balloon-crossed-into-us-trump-2023-2?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-blame-biden-ch...

Sakos 4y ago

> The U2 flew at similar altitudes, we still use them to this day, and they almost certainly contain far more powerful spying equipment. And if they could, other countries would love to shoot them out of the air and it would be fair. You don't put planes like the U2 in operation without being aware of the risks. I don't understand what you're trying to achieve by pointing that out.