Are you serious? This is like looking at a F1 car and going "oh yeah, that's super cheap. Go carts only cost a couple thousand dollars". DoD says that the paylo

Are you serious? This is like looking at a F1 car and going "oh yeah, that's super cheap. Go carts only cost a couple thousand dollars". DoD says that the payload of the balloon is as long as three buses lined up end to end. The balloon itself is likely bigger than many office buildings. A state of the art sensor suite is going to run in the millions. Claiming you can get all that for sub 50k is laughable.