Unidentified balloon belongs to amateur balloonist: US official

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-monitoring-high-altitude-balloon-west-rcna140275

by ironyman • 2 years ago

28 50 2 years ago

nbcnews.com

Wingman4l7• 2 years ago

Very click-bait of them to use a still video thumbnail of the massive Chinese surveillance balloon of last year.

pelagicAustral• 2 years ago

Completely memoryholed that incident. Was it Chinese then, I'm guessing they confirmed that after all.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

It was Chinese and (eventually) admitted such - the dispute was over what exactly it was doing.

1letterunixname3• 2 years ago

Mainstream media both needs outrage for engagement and to stoke "yellow menace" flames to characterize 2 billion people as a "threat" and manufacture consent to appease the powers that be to make the case for expanded military-industrial complex spending instead of healthcare.

wakawaka284• 2 years ago

Well there is some positioning going on for a possible war. The Chinese balloon was part of it. Stop trying to act like China is innocent and minding their business. They are not. They have a hundred year plan for global supremacy and the US has been falling for it, unwittingly. How many factories were sent overseas so we could have a "service economy" of OnlyFans and Uber?

For all this talk of healthcare, we don't even make most of our own medicine. Much of it comes from China and friendly countries in the vicinity of China. I'm frankly amazed that the geniuses in Washington allowed this to happen. Someone must have warned them it was a bad idea.

mikequinlan• 2 years ago

If they have identified it, doesn't that mean it is no longer "unidentified"?

krapp• 2 years ago

Yes.

The title probably should have used "formerly unidentified."

Although most people would be capable of inferring that from the context clues.

dylan6045• 2 years ago

Although most people

oof, you have really high expectations of most people. most people on this forum or most people in general? there's a wide gap there

markx2• 2 years ago

The balloon is therefore identified.

neilv• 2 years ago

How does one operate a balloon like that in US airspace, both legally, and otherwise without being a threat to other aircraft?

rolph• 2 years ago

Amateur radio high-altitude ballooning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_balloon#Amateur_...

https://arhab.org/

reactordev6• 2 years ago

You contact the FAA…

Anytime you do weather balloons, rockets, anything that goes above 500ft AGL, you need to notify FAA ahead of time. Get permits. Approval. And on launch day, have them on the phone.

If it will show up on radar, you better believe they will scramble the fighters.

bozhark• 2 years ago

Oh sweet local rocketry club Jesus. It’s only 500ft?

reachableceo• 2 years ago

Please provide the citation for this requirement? What laws or regulations have this requirement?

ianburrell2• 2 years ago

Balloons are exempt from the ADS-B requirements to broadcast location. Most balloons are above 60,000 ft, away from all airplanes. Larger ones need to get exclusion zone when they launch. Small ones are assumed to be safe from small size.

To launch balloons you buy balloon, build tiny payload, inflate it, and launch. Most balloons transmit location in other ways. They also explode when get too high, and then payload parachutes back to Earth, where it is collected.

1letterunixname3• 2 years ago

It varies around the world. In the US, Class E begins at FL600. Most of Europe, it's FL660.

It would be best if all objects in the sky that could harm aircraft had transponders, including vintage aircraft without electrical systems and balloons.

ianburrell2• 2 years ago

ADS-B transponders are expensive and big, but they are made for the aircraft market. It should be possible to do cheap ADS-B transponder like the cheap and tiny APRS transmitters that the balloons currently use. Assuming that they don't have follow the regulation for aircraft-grade electronics.

ShakataGaNai2• 2 years ago

Amateur balloonists have been running these sorts of things for a really really long time without issue. Unfortunately due to China (Spying? Meteorology? we'll never know), now every time there is a balloon spotted there will be an issue.

While I'm not a fan of regulation, we should have some sort of optional transponder/beacon system that can be voluntarily registered. ADSB-like, which I know balloons can do...but true ADSB is expensive.

That way hobbits can continue doing their thing, the cost per balloon goes up by some minor amount, and we don't scramble jets and make national news constantly.

jcrawfordor2• 2 years ago

The large balloon was definitely from China, China never denied that. The dispute was over its intention, which China maintains was meteorological research.

For example, here is a BBC article that takes a skeptical tone but correctly summarizes the statements made by the Chinese government. Under a more charitable interpretation, one could assume that the Chinese government remained silent for some time because they had to determine which research agency had launched it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64633990

ShakataGaNai2• 2 years ago

You're right, incorrect implication on my part. Fixed.

squarefoot• 2 years ago

The dispute was over its intention, which China maintains was meteorological research.

I seem to recall the US military were able to recover it after shooting it down. If that's the case, analysis of the remains should dispel any doubt about its purpose: sensors used in meteorological research are quite different from those used say for monitoring radio waves or taking photos of terrain.

cyanydeez• 2 years ago

I'm confused. Why is china to blame for america's paranoia?

I know china's doing some shit, but that doesn't really excuse the paranoia being exhibited by balloons.

dylan6045• 2 years ago

even amateur balloonists are supposed to contact ATC so that NOTAMs can be issued. i launched one to about 90,000'. ATC asked me if we had any kind of radio beacons for them to follow, but we were way too small for that. we did have a GPS that we could get some altitude updates on, and ATC asked we update them at every 10,000' for as long as it could be tracked.

if someone is operating a balloon and NOT contacting ATC, they deserve to have there thing shot down. that's just highly irresponsible. it's a simple phone call, and then there's no confusion on if your balloon is a foreign spy platform or not

patrickwalton• 2 years ago

I'll bet the main problem here is that they flew over restricted airspace. Basically the entitled Western half of Utah is restricted for Dugway and the salt flats, which is unfortunate, because it's the area that would be easiest to recover your balloon from. I did a high-altitude balloon in Utah a few weeks ago and had no problems, but we stuck to Eastern Utah (https://twitter.com/mpatrickwalton/status/176000350831999008...).

LorenPechtel5• 2 years ago

Don't the sufficiently small ones not require that?

SV_BubbleTime• 2 years ago

Well, at least they didn’t fire a $400,000 rocket from $65,000,000 fighter jet that costs $50,000 minimum to start and get in the air, only to miss… this time.

cjbenedikt• 2 years ago

"Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that the balloon not only did not transmit data back to China -- it never collected any." https://abcnews-go-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/abcnews.go.com...

wakawaka284• 2 years ago

You need to stay on top of things. It was later reported that it was in fact transmitting. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/china-spy...

As I recall, the spying case was suspected from the start. The Navy cleared out a port just before the balloon passed overhead, just to be safe. I can only assume that's why the ships were evacuated, anyway. The media is not going to tell you the truth, especially not about stuff like this. They wouldn't have told us even if they knew it carried a bomb, probably.

As a matter of fact, you should take anything the government or media says with a healthy dose of salt. Seek out alternative sources. It might save your life. For example, people in Ukraine were told that Russia was not invading up to the day it started. Then they closed their borders and conscripted just about all the men.

LorenPechtel5• 2 years ago

I don't think the world was at all sure Russia was actually going to invade rather than intimidation tactics.

Unidentified balloon belongs to amateur balloonist: US official

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