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Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it wou

by jpgvm 4y ago

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. I don't think it's obvious what the purpose is. It's clearly very large, probably reasonably pricey. The platform alone has ~100k of solar on it, probably another 80k in propulsion, power systems and connectivity. By no means is it outside the means of civilian agencies or even private companies in China. Given the cost of high resolution civilian aerial imagery this actually looks pretty compelling vs aircraft or satellite (which lack the resolution of normal aerial photography platforms). The other thing is that it stands to reason is that if you build this thing, regardless of it's purpose it's going to circle the Earth pretty much no matter what. Except if you deliberately down it of course. A balloon this big, up this high isn't coming down and that propulsion system isn't going to have enough authority to choose which continent you fly over. Anyways, super interesting. Maybe we see legit commercial implementations of this sort of platform in the coming years though it seems like it will be good fun trying to register these with all the various airspace it will inevitably fly through if you launch it.

dhc02 4y ago
Small nitpick: 16 300W solar panels is not ~$100k, it's more like $3,000.
cobalt 4y ago
weather patterns, intercept radio signals, way closer up photography are some reasons
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Satellites follow planned predictable paths. Balloons can loiter.
Invictus0 4y ago
Pricey? China is an $18T economy.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  For a balloon yes, generally speaking most balloons that can reach this altitude are weather balloons which are launched commonly but are cheap and disposable. This platform is an order of magnitude larger and more capable than a normal weather balloon and thus much more expensive.
walrus01 4y ago
> (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) It's impossible to tell from looking at it in a photo taken from that distance what band a parabolic aimed (pan/tilt motorized) geostationary satellite antenna of that type is. Unless you're close enough to measure the diameter of the feed horn. Small size means it's unlikely to be C-band as not enough gain unless you want to waste a huge section of transponder space at BPSK modulation and ultra low bps/Hz ratio. It could be X, Ku, high Ku, Ka, etc. Also extremely likely a craft like that has L/S-band more omnidirectional low data rate command and control radio talking to something in orbit. Basically same idea as L/S-band Inmarsat but operated on military satellites. Obviously the Chinese government won't be using Iridium. Somewhere I think there are also some laid off ex Google Loon project engineers who are having a good laugh about this whole thing.
- mrdmnd 4y ago
  ex-Loon engineer reporting in. Can confirm, I'm having a good chuckle.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Is this something like what you guys would have built if given a mission statement as "spent a few million dollars to build a really long endurance platform, cost is no object" ?
- libertyhouse 4y ago
  Most likely TIANLIAN satcom
pageandrew 4y ago
This balloon would never come down? I imagined that eventually, it would come down on its own. Isn't it bound to leak helium at some small rate?
- jpgvm 4y ago
  It would eventually yes, but not before circling the Earth a good few times. :)
throwawaylinux 4y ago
It can loiter much longer over a site than a satellite which is the obvious thing a balloon does better.
jvanderbot 4y ago
Cell phone snooping they say, but that seems easier from the ground.
- testTED 4y ago
  How?
  - rnjesus 4y ago
    with cell phone snooping gear, probably
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Ship the equipment in, inside an unsuspecting container, on a container ship from China headed for the US. Send two spys in as tourists. Have them rent a truck, pick up the equipment, and just drive it around in target areas.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Buy an apartment in some Highrise for best reception. Anonymously register it to a shell company based in a tax heaven. UV Gov will think this is 'legal' tax evasion just like thousands of landlords. Put any equipment you want inside generic chest on a balcony.
    - testTED 4y ago
      [flagged]
lightedman 4y ago
"surely a satellite does what this does but better?" Nope, which is why Google and Apple pay heavily for on-the-ground recording and aerial photography for their maps.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  yeah but this balloon wasn’t doing sunny day photo flybys, it was up in the stratosphere and couldn’t even be controlled predictably
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  They also don't have access to spy satellite tech though.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Any camera that takes a good picture from 500 miles away takes a better picture from 12 miles away.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Have you seen what civilian imaging satellites look like? They have giant optics the size of a bus. Look at Worldview 3 Even optics 1/10 the size of Worldview would be massive, and this baloon has nothing like it. What is it using, a GoPro?
harles 4y ago
> surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Maybe not. Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead.
- Infinity315 4y ago
  > Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead. And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? Does China think NORAD is a joke or that we're incapable of modelling weather patterns?
  - paulmd 4y ago
    > And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? It doesn't fly wherever the wind takes it. It is designed to move vertically between air layers to whichever layer has wind blowing in the direction it wants to go, and it has turbines to steer itself a little bit on top of that, that's why it's got almost 15kw of solar power onboard. You can literally maneuver the thing in a box-shaped pattern between those air currents and make it hold position over a target area, or at least you can try. Google was doing this a decade ago and it works pretty well. Actual Project Loon flight paths: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/955500294921736192 https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/955500294921736192 > Much like hot air balloon pilots would do to get from place-to-place, these unmanned balloons ride global wind currents like rivers, climbing, and sinking to find the right flow to get to a destination. Google’s computers take weather data from NOAA and determine which current they need to hitch a ride on to reach their destinations. The balloons can only go up or down. https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/07/googles-project-loon-high-altitude-balloons-spotted-over-virginia-and-carolinas/ https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/07/googles-project-loon-high-a...
  - scheme271 4y ago
    Apparently the filters on NORADs radar detection and processing systems where discarding objects like the balloon if they were going slow enough.
- 4y ago
throwbadubadu 4y ago
> also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. I don't think it's obvious what the purpose is. Don't believe the spy angle that much.. maybe this is not about what its purpose is right now, but what it might quickly need to be at some point.. imagine nations start shooting their satellites, orbit becomes unhabitable, and you still want to go spying.. or just replace your satellite based comms network!
mmaunder 4y ago
For RF SIGINT anything the ionosphere absorbs, scatters or reflects isn’t observable by satellites but may be from this balloon.
- flangola7 4y ago
  What could this balloon collect that any regular jet couldn't? I don't think the government is transmitting secrets over such a wide open medium. Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    > Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge. Are you suggesting that encryption is useless against a superpower? If that’s what you’re saying, the same applies to anything transmitted on a cable.
    - flangola7 4y ago
      No I'm saying anything broadcast over such an easily intercepted medium is almost certainly not useful. (Either encrypted or information that is not secretive.) If it really was a signal intelligence balloon, I don't see what it could possibly learn.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Encryption makes signals intelligence more difficult, not impossible. It is and has always been a game of cat and mouse. There is still a lot you can learn from analyzing encrypted signals. The metadata itself may be quite valuable, and any world power undoubtedly does cryptanalysis.
        Breza 4y ago
        Wouldn't there also be a benefit from knowing, for example, that there's a bunch of encrypted radio chatter on a military frequency coming from a rural Montana town with a population of 500? Even without knowing anything that's being said, it might indicate a military presence in that location.
Alupis 4y ago
If I recall details of this story as it was breaking - there was an emphasis that the US tried repeatedly to communicate with counterparts in China to discern the nature of the balloon and cool the situation. From memory, the Chinese side refused to engage on any level... which ultimately led to the balloon being shot down. The Chinese are advanced - there's no chance they couldn't/didn't monitor a balloon of this size launching into their airspace. There's no chance they do not know the true origin and owner of the balloon. If it were civilian/private and/or university - this would have been easy to explain and prove. The balloon may have still ultimately been downed (it was violating airspace regardless of who owns it) - but the situation would have gone rather differently.
- dmix 4y ago
  Didn't some analysis say the balloon likely deployed from Latin America? If it was a Chinese university it's strange we don't have a 3rd country involved yet. Unless it came off a warship or Cuba or something.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    No, there was a separate balloon over South America, also launched from China.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    On the path over Missouri coming from the west coast... I don't think prevailing winds work that way in the US.
    - scheme271 4y ago
      The jetstream goes from west to east so depending on the particular path the jetstream takes a balloon could easily go from alaska to missouri.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Correct, but not Latin America as suggested by the parent.
onepointsixC 4y ago
>Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Two things. It will be significantly better at ELINT, soaking up signals over which it floats. Second, at 60,000 feet it is at least an order of magnitude closer than LEO spy satellites are, if not more. Simple physics dictates the limits of resolution for the lenses for spy satellites. Being significantly closer makes it much easier to provide better images than a multi billion dollar spy satellite. All at a significantly lower cost.
- prpl 4y ago
  That’s true but it assumes it can get within ~40 miles as the crow flies of an interesting target, even then you are going through a LOT more dense atmosphere for your photos.
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    The satellites still have to take photos through the atmosphere. All of the atmosphere, in fact.
    - fijiaarone 4y ago
      Where an object at 60,000 feet would only have about 95% of the atmosphere below it.
    - prpl 4y ago
      It's an optics problem. Most of the scattering when looking down is near the objects because that's where the turbulence and air density. Looking sideways has to go through all of that - it's dense, uniform, and turbulent in comparison to the atmosphere above a point. Another way to reframe this is that you would get a higher resolution looking at an object 100 miles down from space then you'd get looking at an equivalent object 100 miles up. (Keyhole satellites are at 200 miles.) Of course, knowing when satellites are above you is a bit easier to know and prepare for (the governments usually know where sophisticated adversarial satellites are). The smaller satellites I think are quite a bit higher - 300 miles - so the balloon can probably beat them provided it can get with 100 miles (even though there's a lot of those).
Ankaios 4y ago
Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity [...] but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Balloons aren't "bad satellites" or "poor-man's satellites." Satellites and balloons each have different things that they are good at.
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  I was wondering if this might be able to xmit for any number of reasons, from fake cell tower to other kinds, maybe even a numbers station function. Certainly the altitude differential and ease of navigation (presumed, mostly due to balloon having propellers vs. satellites having either much more costly navigation or none) raise this question.
newZWhoDis 4y ago
>4.8kw of panels >has $100k of solar on it Tell me you live in CA without telling me you live in CA
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jonhohle 4y ago
> The platform alone has ~100k of solar on it I’m unfamiliar with solar panels in this application, but would each panel really be $6,250? That’s >20x premium over panels used for terrestrial application for use on a platform that would have little dynamic load.
- simonh 4y ago
  I’d have thought the aerospace or satellite grade panels, struts and mounting systems they’d be more likely to use would be quite a bit more expensive.
- samstave 4y ago
  >"would each panel really be $6,250" In US taxpayer dollars maybe - but in CCCP money, its paid with slave blood, just like how Appl likes it.
mfkp 4y ago
$100k of solar? 360w panels are sub-$300 at full retail prices. So that's under $5k of panels (unless you're including batteries in the calculation, but even then, it's maybe $10k).
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  $100k of solar if installed by one of those door to door salespeople… it’s unfortunate how many people only have numbers from such interactions.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  That is house solar panels. For a craft like this you are using aerospace materials. If you were building it in your backyard yeah, you could probably do it cheap but my experience with commercial grade aerospace components makes me think you are going to be in for sticker shock.
  - mfkp 4y ago
    I highly doubt they're using aerospace-grade solar panels. If they were installing them on a permanent satellite, sure, but this is on a presumably disposable balloon. Even accounting for higher solar radiation and degradation of the panels, the lifespan of regular terrestrial panels should be plenty sufficient.
- snypher 4y ago
  Where are you finding these panels? Renogy is over $1/W and they have usually been price competitive
  - mfkp 4y ago
    https://a1solarstore.com/solar-panels.html https://a1solarstore.com/solar-panels.html 370w panel for $266 (there's lots of good deals out there if you shop around). If you want to save more money and buy by the pallet (22 panels), they're around $182 each for 330w: https://sunelec.com/shop/solar-panels/suniva-330w-solar-panels/ https://sunelec.com/shop/solar-panels/suniva-330w-solar-pane...
iudqnolq 4y ago
You're off by orders of magnitude what "reasonably pricey" on means in this context. For reference, the US plans to spend about 7 million per day over the next five years to build new satellite systems. https://spacenews.com/dod-satcom-big-money-for-military-satellites-slow-shift-to-commercial-services/ https://spacenews.com/dod-satcom-big-money-for-military-sate...
libertyhouse 4y ago
Most likely using the Chinese TIANLIAN satcom for C2 and data backhaul.

by jpgvm 4y ago

dhc02 4y ago

Small nitpick: 16 300W solar panels is not ~$100k, it's more like $3,000.

cobalt 4y ago

weather patterns, intercept radio signals, way closer up photography are some reasons

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Satellites follow planned predictable paths. Balloons can loiter.

Invictus0 4y ago

Pricey? China is an $18T economy.

jpgvm 4y ago
For a balloon yes, generally speaking most balloons that can reach this altitude are weather balloons which are launched commonly but are cheap and disposable. This platform is an order of magnitude larger and more capable than a normal weather balloon and thus much more expensive.

walrus01 4y ago

> (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) It's impossible to tell from looking at it in a photo taken from that distance what band a parabolic aimed (pan/tilt motorized) geostationary satellite antenna of that type is. Unless you're close enough to measure the diameter of the feed horn. Small size means it's unlikely to be C-band as not enough gain unless you want to waste a huge section of transponder space at BPSK modulation and ultra low bps/Hz ratio. It could be X, Ku, high Ku, Ka, etc. Also extremely likely a craft like that has L/S-band more omnidirectional low data rate command and control radio talking to something in orbit. Basically same idea as L/S-band Inmarsat but operated on military satellites. Obviously the Chinese government won't be using Iridium. Somewhere I think there are also some laid off ex Google Loon project engineers who are having a good laugh about this whole thing.

mrdmnd 4y ago
ex-Loon engineer reporting in. Can confirm, I'm having a good chuckle.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Is this something like what you guys would have built if given a mission statement as "spent a few million dollars to build a really long endurance platform, cost is no object" ?
libertyhouse 4y ago
Most likely TIANLIAN satcom

pageandrew 4y ago

This balloon would never come down? I imagined that eventually, it would come down on its own. Isn't it bound to leak helium at some small rate?

jpgvm 4y ago
It would eventually yes, but not before circling the Earth a good few times. :)

throwawaylinux 4y ago

It can loiter much longer over a site than a satellite which is the obvious thing a balloon does better.

jvanderbot 4y ago

Cell phone snooping they say, but that seems easier from the ground.

testTED 4y ago
How?
- rnjesus 4y ago
  with cell phone snooping gear, probably
- zamnos 4y ago
  Ship the equipment in, inside an unsuspecting container, on a container ship from China headed for the US. Send two spys in as tourists. Have them rent a truck, pick up the equipment, and just drive it around in target areas.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Buy an apartment in some Highrise for best reception. Anonymously register it to a shell company based in a tax heaven. UV Gov will think this is 'legal' tax evasion just like thousands of landlords. Put any equipment you want inside generic chest on a balcony.
  - testTED 4y ago
    [flagged]

lightedman 4y ago

"surely a satellite does what this does but better?" Nope, which is why Google and Apple pay heavily for on-the-ground recording and aerial photography for their maps.

micromacrofoot 4y ago
yeah but this balloon wasn’t doing sunny day photo flybys, it was up in the stratosphere and couldn’t even be controlled predictably
mardifoufs 4y ago
They also don't have access to spy satellite tech though.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Any camera that takes a good picture from 500 miles away takes a better picture from 12 miles away.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Have you seen what civilian imaging satellites look like? They have giant optics the size of a bus. Look at Worldview 3 Even optics 1/10 the size of Worldview would be massive, and this baloon has nothing like it. What is it using, a GoPro?

harles 4y ago

> surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Maybe not. Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead.

Infinity315 4y ago
> Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead. And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? Does China think NORAD is a joke or that we're incapable of modelling weather patterns?
- paulmd 4y ago
  > And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? It doesn't fly wherever the wind takes it. It is designed to move vertically between air layers to whichever layer has wind blowing in the direction it wants to go, and it has turbines to steer itself a little bit on top of that, that's why it's got almost 15kw of solar power onboard. You can literally maneuver the thing in a box-shaped pattern between those air currents and make it hold position over a target area, or at least you can try. Google was doing this a decade ago and it works pretty well. Actual Project Loon flight paths: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/955500294921736192 https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/955500294921736192 > Much like hot air balloon pilots would do to get from place-to-place, these unmanned balloons ride global wind currents like rivers, climbing, and sinking to find the right flow to get to a destination. Google’s computers take weather data from NOAA and determine which current they need to hitch a ride on to reach their destinations. The balloons can only go up or down. https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/07/googles-project-loon-high-altitude-balloons-spotted-over-virginia-and-carolinas/ https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/07/googles-project-loon-high-a...
- scheme271 4y ago
  Apparently the filters on NORADs radar detection and processing systems where discarding objects like the balloon if they were going slow enough.
4y ago

throwbadubadu 4y ago

> also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. I don't think it's obvious what the purpose is. Don't believe the spy angle that much.. maybe this is not about what its purpose is right now, but what it might quickly need to be at some point.. imagine nations start shooting their satellites, orbit becomes unhabitable, and you still want to go spying.. or just replace your satellite based comms network!

mmaunder 4y ago

For RF SIGINT anything the ionosphere absorbs, scatters or reflects isn’t observable by satellites but may be from this balloon.

flangola7 4y ago
What could this balloon collect that any regular jet couldn't? I don't think the government is transmitting secrets over such a wide open medium. Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge.
- kube-system 4y ago
  > Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge. Are you suggesting that encryption is useless against a superpower? If that’s what you’re saying, the same applies to anything transmitted on a cable.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    No I'm saying anything broadcast over such an easily intercepted medium is almost certainly not useful. (Either encrypted or information that is not secretive.) If it really was a signal intelligence balloon, I don't see what it could possibly learn.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Encryption makes signals intelligence more difficult, not impossible. It is and has always been a game of cat and mouse. There is still a lot you can learn from analyzing encrypted signals. The metadata itself may be quite valuable, and any world power undoubtedly does cryptanalysis.
      - Breza 4y ago
        Wouldn't there also be a benefit from knowing, for example, that there's a bunch of encrypted radio chatter on a military frequency coming from a rural Montana town with a population of 500? Even without knowing anything that's being said, it might indicate a military presence in that location.

Alupis 4y ago

If I recall details of this story as it was breaking - there was an emphasis that the US tried repeatedly to communicate with counterparts in China to discern the nature of the balloon and cool the situation. From memory, the Chinese side refused to engage on any level... which ultimately led to the balloon being shot down. The Chinese are advanced - there's no chance they couldn't/didn't monitor a balloon of this size launching into their airspace. There's no chance they do not know the true origin and owner of the balloon. If it were civilian/private and/or university - this would have been easy to explain and prove. The balloon may have still ultimately been downed (it was violating airspace regardless of who owns it) - but the situation would have gone rather differently.

dmix 4y ago
Didn't some analysis say the balloon likely deployed from Latin America? If it was a Chinese university it's strange we don't have a 3rd country involved yet. Unless it came off a warship or Cuba or something.
- Alupis 4y ago
  No, there was a separate balloon over South America, also launched from China.
- pixl97 4y ago
  On the path over Missouri coming from the west coast... I don't think prevailing winds work that way in the US.
  - scheme271 4y ago
    The jetstream goes from west to east so depending on the particular path the jetstream takes a balloon could easily go from alaska to missouri.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Correct, but not Latin America as suggested by the parent.

onepointsixC 4y ago

>Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Two things. It will be significantly better at ELINT, soaking up signals over which it floats. Second, at 60,000 feet it is at least an order of magnitude closer than LEO spy satellites are, if not more. Simple physics dictates the limits of resolution for the lenses for spy satellites. Being significantly closer makes it much easier to provide better images than a multi billion dollar spy satellite. All at a significantly lower cost.

prpl 4y ago
That’s true but it assumes it can get within ~40 miles as the crow flies of an interesting target, even then you are going through a LOT more dense atmosphere for your photos.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  The satellites still have to take photos through the atmosphere. All of the atmosphere, in fact.
  - fijiaarone 4y ago
    Where an object at 60,000 feet would only have about 95% of the atmosphere below it.
  - prpl 4y ago
    It's an optics problem. Most of the scattering when looking down is near the objects because that's where the turbulence and air density. Looking sideways has to go through all of that - it's dense, uniform, and turbulent in comparison to the atmosphere above a point. Another way to reframe this is that you would get a higher resolution looking at an object 100 miles down from space then you'd get looking at an equivalent object 100 miles up. (Keyhole satellites are at 200 miles.) Of course, knowing when satellites are above you is a bit easier to know and prepare for (the governments usually know where sophisticated adversarial satellites are). The smaller satellites I think are quite a bit higher - 300 miles - so the balloon can probably beat them provided it can get with 100 miles (even though there's a lot of those).

Ankaios 4y ago

Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity [...] but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. Balloons aren't "bad satellites" or "poor-man's satellites." Satellites and balloons each have different things that they are good at.

themodelplumber 4y ago
I was wondering if this might be able to xmit for any number of reasons, from fake cell tower to other kinds, maybe even a numbers station function. Certainly the altitude differential and ease of navigation (presumed, mostly due to balloon having propellers vs. satellites having either much more costly navigation or none) raise this question.

newZWhoDis 4y ago

>4.8kw of panels >has $100k of solar on it Tell me you live in CA without telling me you live in CA

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jonhohle 4y ago

> The platform alone has ~100k of solar on it I’m unfamiliar with solar panels in this application, but would each panel really be $6,250? That’s >20x premium over panels used for terrestrial application for use on a platform that would have little dynamic load.

simonh 4y ago
I’d have thought the aerospace or satellite grade panels, struts and mounting systems they’d be more likely to use would be quite a bit more expensive.
samstave 4y ago
>"would each panel really be $6,250" In US taxpayer dollars maybe - but in CCCP money, its paid with slave blood, just like how Appl likes it.

mfkp 4y ago

$100k of solar? 360w panels are sub-$300 at full retail prices. So that's under $5k of panels (unless you're including batteries in the calculation, but even then, it's maybe $10k).

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
$100k of solar if installed by one of those door to door salespeople… it’s unfortunate how many people only have numbers from such interactions.
jpgvm 4y ago
That is house solar panels. For a craft like this you are using aerospace materials. If you were building it in your backyard yeah, you could probably do it cheap but my experience with commercial grade aerospace components makes me think you are going to be in for sticker shock.
- mfkp 4y ago
  I highly doubt they're using aerospace-grade solar panels. If they were installing them on a permanent satellite, sure, but this is on a presumably disposable balloon. Even accounting for higher solar radiation and degradation of the panels, the lifespan of regular terrestrial panels should be plenty sufficient.
snypher 4y ago
Where are you finding these panels? Renogy is over $1/W and they have usually been price competitive
- mfkp 4y ago
  https://a1solarstore.com/solar-panels.html https://a1solarstore.com/solar-panels.html 370w panel for $266 (there's lots of good deals out there if you shop around). If you want to save more money and buy by the pallet (22 panels), they're around $182 each for 330w: https://sunelec.com/shop/solar-panels/suniva-330w-solar-panels/ https://sunelec.com/shop/solar-panels/suniva-330w-solar-pane...

iudqnolq 4y ago

You're off by orders of magnitude what "reasonably pricey" on means in this context. For reference, the US plans to spend about 7 million per day over the next five years to build new satellite systems. https://spacenews.com/dod-satcom-big-money-for-military-satellites-slow-shift-to-commercial-services/ https://spacenews.com/dod-satcom-big-money-for-military-sate...

libertyhouse 4y ago

Most likely using the Chinese TIANLIAN satcom for C2 and data backhaul.