Chinese Spy Balloon Flying Over the U.S.

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Cap'n Jack said:
Why do you think that our military were broadcasting anything of importance? The apparently knew the balloon was up there before it flew over Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48. Do you think they would continue to broadcast anything of importance when they knew there was a potential adversarial listener? Or alternately, why wouldn't they create spoof broadcasts?
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Even more likely, why would they not jam anything the balloon was trying to transmit.

So much of the public assumes this thing was just talking freely to Beijing. In reality, it probably wasn't getting anything out.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
So because it is "normal" that makes it a good thing?
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I didn’t say it was a good thing, though certain hatreds might be good. I was responding to a post that objected to “normalizing” hate. I merely explained that hate is already quite normal.



Cap'n Jack said:
I understand the politicians, but what's wrong with "damnyankees"? And why are they damned?
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This one should be self-evident so I won’t waste time with it.
 
Half Fast said:
I didn’t say it was a good thing, though certain hatreds might be good. I was responding to a post that objected to “normalizing” hate. I merely explained that hate is already quite normal.
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So what do you think should be done about it?
Which hatreds are good?

Half Fast said:
This one should be self-evident so I won’t waste time with it.
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I'm sorry, but it really isn't obvious to me. I consider myself reasonably educated with advanced scientific degrees and an MBA. But I would appreciate if you answered my question, since your meaning is different from the one I understand. People around the world call anyone from the USA "yankees" and sometimes modify that with the "damn" adjective, so this would mean you are a "damnyankee" to them as well.
 
Half Fast said:
What's abnormal about hate? It seems to occur naturally, pretty much everyone has it for one thing or another, and it's been around since Cain stoned Able. Seems pretty normal to me.
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“Common” is not the same as “normal”. Diabetes is common and I’d be surprised if anyone wanted to “normalize” that and make it an accepted state and not avoid or treat it.

But, yes, in certain circles hate does seem to be “common” - and becoming more so. I still contend making it a desired state is not good - and is at odds with pretty much every mainstream moral compass.

Hating some depersonalized group of fellow Americans seems, well, un-American to me.
 
Yeah, I'm kind of used to people (Americans and otherwise) expressing that they wished me death/nothing of value would be lost/etc just because of the geographic location in which I happen to live.
The weird thing is that I only happen to live here because it's the last place the military stationed my father during his lifetime of service to this country.

I know it's usually not personal, and that the same people wouldn't likely say the same to my kid or wife's face.
 
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Cap'n Jack said:
So what do you think should be done about it?
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Is it a given that anything should be done about making hatred abnormal? If so, why? Should we quibble with many thousands of years of human development? And should we waste our limited time on a hopeless effort?


Cap'n Jack said:
Which hatreds are good?
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That would be a personal list, unique to the each individual. Many might consider a hatred of disease to be good. Some would say hatred of war is good. Society seems to hate murder. Personally I hate boiled okra.


Cap'n Jack said:
I'm sorry, but it really isn't obvious to me. I consider myself reasonably educated with advanced scientific degrees and an MBA. But I would appreciate if you answered my question, since your meaning is different from the one I understand.
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Congratulations. I have several scientific degrees myself, though I’m not sure what that has to do with anything here.

For some of us, no explanation is necessary. For others, no explanation will be sufficient. I’m afraid you’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.


Could we get back to discussing balloons now?
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Hating some depersonalized group of fellow Americans seems, well, un-American to me.
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Oh, I dunno. I don't think hating neo-Nazis, the KKK, or secret Chinese police stations operating on US soil is anything different than the American people would have done in WWI or WWII.
 
Half Fast said:
Is it a given that anything should be done about making hatred abnormal? If so, why? Should we quibble with many thousands of years of human development? And should we waste our limited time on a hopeless effort?
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There’s this 2,000ish year old book that answers that. Among other moral codes and their literature…

So, yes, you’re working to normalize hate, it sounds like. Not promoting it - just accepting it as inevitable and promoting it as acceptable.
 
Half Fast said:
Is it a given that anything should be done about making hatred abnormal? If so, why? Should we quibble with many thousands of years of human development? And should we waste our limited time on a hopeless effort?
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Why do you say "thousands"? Humans have been around a lot longer than that. You and I can't help what other people do for the most part. But each of us have the ability to control our actions, such as hating on other people. Do you hate the people in those cities you mentioned?


Half Fast said:
That would be a personal list, unique to the each individual. Many might consider a hatred of disease to be good. Some would say hatred of war is good. Society seems to hate murder. Personally I hate boiled okra.
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How about other people?




Half Fast said:
Congratulations. I have several scientific degrees myself, though I’m not sure what that has to do with anything here.
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Nothing, except that I was making the point that I wasn't totally uneducated

Half Fast said:
For some of us, no explanation is necessary. For others, no explanation will be sufficient. I’m afraid you’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.
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Why won't you answer? I merely want a definition.
Why are "damnyankees" bad?


Half Fast said:
Could we get back to discussing balloons now?
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I don't wish to.
 
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RyanShort1 said:
Oh, I dunno. I don't think hating neo-Nazis, the KKK, or secret Chinese police stations operating on US soil is anything different than the American people would have done in WWI or WWII.
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I don't hate them. I don't like their actions nor their beliefs.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Oh, I dunno. I don't think hating neo-Nazis, the KKK, or secret Chinese police stations operating on US soil is anything different than the American people would have done in WWI or WWII.
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Hating a behavior is one thing and has nothing to do with race or nationality. Hating a class of people - like, say, American citizens who are of Japanese ancestry but have not done anything other than be solid American citizens and who I’ve never met, so let’s put them in “camps” - is different, IMHO.
 
NoHeat said:
That's exactly what a couple of retired generals have said, in news reports. There's not much info the balloon can gather that can't be obtained another way. The only reasonable purpose of the flight was to see how we would react, or not react. (Sounds plausible to me, but other retired talking heads of course have other takes on this.)
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Despite that the military knew of this balloon. Why didn't they shoot it down before it entered the US? They had the capability to do so. And the fact that the news wasn't let out until the balloon was over Montana, makes me think that the government let it float its way across the US for a reason. Or did we just expose a weakness in our airspace defense? Who knows...
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
328559793_866596191306046_6709793355923192425_n.jpg
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Thanks for posting that picture...it's the clearest I've seen showing the payload block below the balloon envelope.
chinese balloon payload.JPG
No obvious ways to scale the image, so we don't know how big things really are. I'm actually a bit surprised by the size of the solar array...it's pretty big. However, it might not track the sun, which means it won't be pointed to produce maximum power. Putting in a larger array might compensate for the the cosine error. But I'd want to see a photo of the balloon at dusk or dawn to verify it's not pointing the arrays.

Also, note that half the array is shadowed by the sun...probably pretty typical. I'd guess that it has such a big array because, normally, a large portion of it is going to be out of the sun.

There's an obvious equipment bay at the crossing of the two main trusses, looks pretty roomy. Let's call the truss with the solar arrays the "main truss," and the other the "cross truss."

The equipment bay is reasonably sized for 21st century electronics. Curiously,the payload is suspended from the envelope by THREE cables/beams...not four. There isn't a cable to one end of the cross truss. It's possible that the entire truss assembly rotates to point the solar arrays, by adjusting the length of the single cable to the cross truss. Still, it doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of angle adjustment available.

As I speculated earlier, the Chinese would have had to put a lot of batteries aboard to allow the vehicle to operate during a 14-hour night. These obviously aren't located on the cross truss; you can see right through it. The main truss is checkered like the cross truss, but isn't transparent. We might be seeing the same kind of truss on the outside, but the inside is loaded with batteries or other equipment.

The ends of the main truss have paired diamond-shaped structures; on the near side is an object that looks like a radome. May well be a collection antenna, or, possibly, the uplink antenna that connects it to a satellite. Having a radome, though, is curious..it's not like it needs one for aerodynamic purposes. One potential reason is to hide where the antenna is pointing...using a radome make it more difficult to determine what target it's collecting from, or which satellite its transmitting to.

There's another object on the opposite end of the main truss. It doesn't seem to fully match the other unit, though that could be just because of the different viewing aspect.

One thing curious about it is the *sizes* of the antennas. Again, it's hard to judge without a scale, but they don't look that large. Generally, if you're going to try to listen in on someone else's transmission, you need an antenna at least as big as the one that the other guy's use to receive the same signal. These don't seem very big.

And articulation comes into play here, just like the solar arrays. An antenna pointing off the end of the main truss won't be situated for receiving (or transmitting...) a signal off the cross truss. It's possible the entire structure rotates by turning the black disk that the three truss cables are attached to.

Anyway, fun to speculate.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Mavalathon said:
Despite that the military knew of this balloon. Why didn't they shoot it down before it entered the US? They had the capability to do so. And the fact that the news wasn't let out until the balloon was over Montana, makes me think that the government let it float its way across the US for a reason. Or did we just expose a weakness in our airspace defense? Who knows...
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Think it was more likely that the DOD was keeping the existence of this balloon secret...just like the previous flights that we're just now finding out about. This only got public when a civilian in Montana got a picture of it.

Recall, we DID sign a treaty years ago pledging "Open Skies" for those wanting to verify that we were making no hostile actions against them. Of course, China never signed (and thus gained no protection from it), and we repudiated the treaty ourselves in November 2020.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
One thing curious about it is the *sizes* of the antennas. Again, it's hard to judge without a scale, but they don't look that large. Generally, if you're going to try to listen in on someone else's transmission, you need an antenna at least as big as the one that the other guy's use to receive the same signal. These don't seem very big.
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Any thoughts about 1/4 wave or some other type of antenna?

wanttaja said:
It's possible the entire structure rotates by turning the black disk that the three truss cables are attached to.
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They would need some way of countering the torque of rotating that structure, wouldn't they? Not impossible by any means.
 
wanttaja said:
Think it was more likely that the DOD was keeping the existence of this balloon secret...just like the previous flights that we're just now finding out about. This only got public when a civilian in Montana got a picture of it.
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Per an interview with one of the members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence your guess is most likely correct.

I also read somewhere that the diameter of the balloon was 120' ...
 
wanttaja said:
Thanks for posting that picture...it's the clearest I've seen showing the payload block below the balloon envelope.
View attachment 114655
No obvious ways to scale the image, so we don't know how big things really are. I'm actually a bit surprised by the size of the solar array...it's pretty big. However, it might not track the sun, which means it won't be pointed to produce maximum power. Putting in a larger array might compensate for the the cosine error. But I'd want to see a photo of the balloon at dusk or dawn to verify it's not pointing the arrays.

Also, note that half the array is shadowed by the sun...probably pretty typical. I'd guess that it has such a big array because, normally, a large portion of it is going to be out of the sun.

There's an obvious equipment bay at the crossing of the two main trusses, looks pretty roomy. Let's call the truss with the solar arrays the "main truss," and the other the "cross truss."

The equipment bay is reasonably sized for 21st century electronics. Curiously,the payload is suspended from the envelope by THREE cables/beams...not four. There isn't a cable to one end of the cross truss. It's possible that the entire truss assembly rotates to point the solar arrays, by adjusting the length of the single cable to the cross truss. Still, it doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of angle adjustment available.

As I speculated earlier, the Chinese would have had to put a lot of batteries aboard to allow the vehicle to operate during a 14-hour night. These obviously aren't located on the cross truss; you can see right through it. The main truss is checkered like the cross truss, but isn't transparent. We might be seeing the same kind of truss on the outside, but the inside is loaded with batteries or other equipment.

The ends of the main truss have paired diamond-shaped structures; on the near side is an object that looks like a radome. May well be a collection antenna, or, possibly, the uplink antenna that connects it to a satellite. Having a radome, though, is curious..it's not like it needs one for aerodynamic purposes. One potential reason is to hide where the antenna is pointing...using a radome make it more difficult to determine what target it's collecting from, or which satellite its transmitting to.

There's another object on the opposite end of the main truss. It doesn't seem to fully match the other unit, though that could be just because of the different viewing aspect.

One thing curious about it is the *sizes* of the antennas. Again, it's hard to judge without a scale, but they don't look that large. Generally, if you're going to try to listen in on someone else's transmission, you need an antenna at least as big as the one that the other guy's use to receive the same signal. These don't seem very big.

And articulation comes into play here, just like the solar arrays. An antenna pointing off the end of the main truss won't be situated for receiving (or transmitting...) a signal off the cross truss. It's possible the entire structure rotates by turning the black disk that the three truss cables are attached to.

Anyway, fun to speculate.

Ron Wanttaja
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Are you sure that's the right image? Original taken by a photog in MO shows four (4) dark panels per side on the payload.
upload_2023-2-5_15-36-51.jpeg
 
Piperonca said:
Are you sure that's the right image? Original taken by a photog in MO shows four (4) dark panels per side on the payload.
View attachment 114657
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And no big black disk in the bottom of the envelope, and only a single truss.

Curiouser and curiouser. Could Cap'n Thorpe's picture be from an earlier mission that the press DIDN'T find out about? His was posted a a meme; wonder if the originator just used a generic photo.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
And no big black disk in the bottom of the envelope, and only a single truss.

Curiouser and curiouser. Could Cap'n Thorpe's picture be from an earlier mission that the press DIDN'T find out about? His was posted a a meme; wonder if the originator just used a generic photo.

Ron Wanttaja
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Same thought here. But who makes up generic photos like that...
 
wanttaja said:
And no big black disk in the bottom of the envelope, and only a single truss.

Curiouser and curiouser. Could Cap'n Thorpe's picture be from an earlier mission that the press DIDN'T find out about? His was posted a a meme; wonder if the originator just used a generic photo.

Ron Wanttaja
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I believe I saw that photo as a stock example of an actual weather balloon.
 
Salty said:
You’ve heard of memes, right?
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Sure. But it's interesting this meme has a balloon similar, but different, from the Chinese balloon when most people have only just heard about it in the past few days. Why make something different when they have the original to work from?
 
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Piperonca said:
Are you sure that's the right image? Original taken by a photog in MO shows four (4) dark panels per side on the payload.
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Looking at the new picture, the waviness of the solar arrays stand out. This could reflect a lightweight flexible backing, OR due to atmospheric distortion from being taken from 60,000 feet away.

No obvious big antennas. Could be mounted inside the envelope, but I'm a bit skeptical.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Any thoughts about 1/4 wave or some other type of antenna?
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Asking the wrong guy. As I used to explain to the people at work, I'm a CommunicatING Engineer, not a Communications Engineer. :)

From the systems point of view, though, to intercept a signal at the same range as the intended receiver, you need an antenna the same size or larger. OR some really good signal processing.

The mission I've been imagining for this system won't really work without a good directional antenna. So I can probably throw that one out the window.

Cap'n Jack said:
They would need some way of countering the torque of rotating that structure, wouldn't they? Not impossible by any means.
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Yeah, the envelope would turn the opposite way, but that's not an issue. Not a problem if the envelope rotates ~60 degrees while the payload rotates 30, as long as 30 degrees is what you need to point at the target.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Maybe they’re pix of before and after the bats were released over Montana
 
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