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Interesting. The “big sky” theory has its limits. Curious too to learn more about what data, if any, is shared with ATC on the location of these balloons. Airs

by JCM9 1y ago

Interesting. The “big sky” theory has its limits. Curious too to learn more about what data, if any, is shared with ATC on the location of these balloons. Airspace is regularly blocked off for rockets and other use, but for many weather balloons the theory is 1) the sky is big, and 2) designs are meant to be that a strike with an aircraft wouldn’t cause significant damage. If this was an impact with a balloon payload then “2” looks problematic.

consp 1y ago
Isn't this pure statistics? The big sky isn't as big since planes always follow certain patterns and so do weather balloons (because wind also has patterns). Now someone needs to do some black magic with that model and calculate the arrival time distribution of accidents and you get to see if this is an outlier or not.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  > planes always follow certain patterns At any particular and above a certain flight level maybe.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  The birthday paradox seems relevant here as well: With 23 people, your chance of having a "collision" in birthdays is over 50%. With more objects in the sky, the chance of collision is likely greater than one would assume given the space they have to occupy.
  - pastel8739 1y ago
    Though the birthday paradox is concerned with self-collisions, I think since these are explicitly collisions with other objects it feels less paradoxical to compute
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      It still applies. The classic scenario involves birthdays, a one-dimensional space that closes in itself; while this one is a three-dimensional space that is closed on two of them. Airborne objects also move so I don't know if that decreases or increases the probability of collisions, I guess it depends on how much correlation there is between their movements. It sounds like a fascinating thing to study!
- cloverich 1y ago
  Related, i dont know what the technical term for this is, but was thinking about how because of speed, being in two places at once (collision) the equation depends greatly on speed. Simplistically, if planes traveled at the speed of light then an object on ANY point of their trajectory would collide. Much more complex than simply amount of space times size of objects. Knowing theres a whole science / engineering behind this, Im just so curious about the people and practices that go into this part of travel especially air and space travel.

by JCM9 1y ago

consp 1y ago

Isn't this pure statistics? The big sky isn't as big since planes always follow certain patterns and so do weather balloons (because wind also has patterns). Now someone needs to do some black magic with that model and calculate the arrival time distribution of accidents and you get to see if this is an outlier or not.

barbazoo 1y ago
> planes always follow certain patterns At any particular and above a certain flight level maybe.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
The birthday paradox seems relevant here as well: With 23 people, your chance of having a "collision" in birthdays is over 50%. With more objects in the sky, the chance of collision is likely greater than one would assume given the space they have to occupy.
- pastel8739 1y ago
  Though the birthday paradox is concerned with self-collisions, I think since these are explicitly collisions with other objects it feels less paradoxical to compute
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    It still applies. The classic scenario involves birthdays, a one-dimensional space that closes in itself; while this one is a three-dimensional space that is closed on two of them. Airborne objects also move so I don't know if that decreases or increases the probability of collisions, I guess it depends on how much correlation there is between their movements. It sounds like a fascinating thing to study!
cloverich 1y ago
Related, i dont know what the technical term for this is, but was thinking about how because of speed, being in two places at once (collision) the equation depends greatly on speed. Simplistically, if planes traveled at the speed of light then an object on ANY point of their trajectory would collide. Much more complex than simply amount of space times size of objects. Knowing theres a whole science / engineering behind this, Im just so curious about the people and practices that go into this part of travel especially air and space travel.