Spy Balloon!

DoubleAtotheRON said:

So, you're saying that the odds of a commercial airliner at near the same altitude wouldn't have a better chance at spotting it? "Hey Bob, what's that dot at our 2 o'clock and 20 degrees a few miles out'?

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They're looking out of a cockpit, with a roof, while hopefully paying attention to instruments, and can't really just change their flight plan to satisfy their curiosity.
The chinese have been doing this for at least a couple of years now, maybe longer, and it took this long for ANYONE to notice them.
Balloons fly where the winds take them, there is some slight control possible, the operators can release some gas to drop them into winds that blow them the way they want to go, but that's about it. As you can see on your map, planes aren't everywhere. they don't fly over open water any more than they have to, they stay in strictly defined corridors, at controlled heights, to avoid mid air collisions.
I do not have a ven diagram of when and where balloons intersect commercial flight paths, but I'm of the opinion that the answer is not often, and out of that "not often", you have to consider that many of them are flying at night.
I think the opportunities for identification are much rarer than you seem to think they are.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

They're looking out of a cockpit, with a roof, while hopefully paying attention to instruments, and can't really just change their flight plan to satisfy their curiosity.
The chinese have been doing this for at least a couple of years now, maybe longer, and it took this long for ANYONE to notice them.
Balloons fly where the winds take them, there is some slight control possible, the operators can release some gas to drop them into winds that blow them the way they want to go, but that's about it. As you can see on your map, planes aren't everywhere. they don't fly over open water any more than they have to, they stay in strictly defined corridors, at controlled heights, to avoid mid air collisions.
I do not have a ven diagram of when and where balloons intersect commercial flight paths, but I'm of the opinion that the answer is not often, and out of that "not often", you have to consider that many of them are flying at night.
I think the opportunities for identification are much rarer than you seem to think they are.

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Possible. But, flight corridors do change depending on the jet stream, and air traffic. Pilots spend most of thier time during long flights just bullshitting. Once they are leveled off, and heading is set, they go to auto pilot until Control commands a change in heading. Otherwise, they have a lot of time on thier hands.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

They're looking out of a cockpit, with a roof, while hopefully paying attention to instruments, and can't really just change their flight plan to satisfy their curiosity.
The chinese have been doing this for at least a couple of years now, maybe longer, and it took this long for ANYONE to notice them.
Balloons fly where the winds take them, there is some slight control possible, the operators can release some gas to drop them into winds that blow them the way they want to go, but that's about it. As you can see on your map, planes aren't everywhere. they don't fly over open water any more than they have to, they stay in strictly defined corridors, at controlled heights, to avoid mid air collisions.
I do not have a ven diagram of when and where balloons intersect commercial flight paths, but I'm of the opinion that the answer is not often, and out of that "not often", you have to consider that many of them are flying at night.
I think the opportunities for identification are much rarer than you seem to think they are.

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Contrast becomes an issue. I’ve chanced upon a number of hair-fine contrails with empty sky at their tips. At 15x.

Stay with it, and if I was lucky I’d catch a brief pastel glint when the sun was just right, usually of the unmistakable planform of a Global Hawk.

The translucent gray of a polythene bag just vanishes except under certain oblique lighting, notably local sunup and sundown.

bam0813 said:

Enough i guess according to pentagon

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lol

Righties are going all over the place on this. So desperate to cling to whatever shred of self respect they have left. So they make shit up, tell it to other like minded people, let the made up shit circle back and then say, "see I told you so".

I'm finally beginning to understand how that kind of mind works.

bam0813 said:

Why would you have to be above 40K to spot it? People watched the first one from the ground

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The relationship between object size and distance is an inverse linear relationship, i.e. size is 1 / distance.

The most recent object that was shot down was described as the size of a bus and flying at 40000 ft.

A bus is 35 feet long

Commercial air traffic is between 36,000 and 42,000 feet
Turboprop aircraft have a ceiling of 31,000 feet
Typical private jet flies below 15.000 feet.

So, a commercial aircraft could have flown by close enough to see it. How close would that have to be?

Let's make 1 mm to the eye the smallest it could be. 1 mm = .003 ft

the diameter of the balloon would be the length of a bus or 35 ft diameter

35 ft x 1/distance = .003 ft

distance = 35/.003 = 12,000 ft

So, whatever the thing is, the pilot would have to be within 12,000 feet of it to even have a chance to see it. That's under absolute best conditions of lighting, contrast, pilot's eye and somehow a speck in the sky caught his attention. About 2.5 miles away. So, for an aircraft to see it, the minimum altitude would be 37,500 ft. if the pilot were looking directly up. Since a pilot would normally be looking forward, much less, probably 39,000 feet.

The bigger one was described as the size of three buses or 105 feet diameter. It could be seen if it were 35,000 ft away or about 8 miles away maybe a little more if the pilot were looking straight up. That balloon had a prop and could be steered away from regular air traffic patterns. So, easy peasy to avoid being seen.

Summary: You are caught in the dilemma of big numbers. 1) Is it possible that those balloons could have been seen from the air? Yes. 2) But very, very, very, very unlikely.

Yet you and your kind are only able to understand the first answer.

I'm not accounting for contrast or brightness and, yes, it's possible to see something smaller than a millimeter wide if one knows where to look. People did see it from the ground.

But only if one were looking for it and under the best conditions. Again, you are dealing with a common failure of logic. Sorry about that.

disclaimer: I don't expect you or any other MAGA to understand this. I ran the numbers for my own satisfaction.

Fogdog said:

lol

Righties are going all over the place on this. So desperate to cling to whatever shred of self respect they have left. So they make shit up, tell it to other like minded people, let the made up shit circle back and then say, "see I told you so".

I'm finally beginning to understand how that kind of mind works.


The relationship between object size and distance is an inverse linear relationship, i.e. size is 1 / distance.

The most recent object that was shot down was described as the size of a bus and flying at 40000 ft.

A bus is 35 feet long

Commercial air traffic is between 36,000 and 42,000 feet
Turboprop aircraft have a ceiling of 31,000 feet
Typical private jet flies below 15.000 feet.

So, a commercial aircraft could have flown by close enough to see it. How close would that have to be?

Let's make 1 mm to the eye the smallest it could be. 1 mm = .003 ft

the diameter of the balloon would be the length of a bus or 35 ft diameter

35 ft x 1/distance = .003 ft

distance = 35/.003 = 12,000 ft

.

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I had read that is was 200ft in diameter, not 35 ft..... so that would change your formula.

DoubleAtotheRON said:

I had read that is was 200ft in diameter, not 35 ft..... so that would change your formula.

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dammit.

Read my post more carefully. The second one shot down was said to be the size of a bus. The first one was said to be the size of three buses, or 105 feet diameter. If you want to believe it was 200 feet, run the numbers yourself. It doesn't change the conclusion that you are failing to understand the difference between possible and very , very , very , very unlikely.

Fogdog said:

dammit.

Read my post more carefully. The second one shot down was said to be the size of a bus. The first one was said to be the size of three buses, or 105 feet diameter. If you want to believe it was 200 feet, run the numbers yourself. It doesn't change the conclusion that you are failing to understand the difference between possible and very , very , very , very unlikely.

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Ahh .. I missed that one sentence... I was assuming we were talking about the first one.

Fogdog said:

dammit.

Read my post more carefully. The second one shot down was said to be the size of a bus. The first one was said to be the size of three buses, or 105 feet diameter. If you want to believe it was 200 feet, run the numbers yourself. It doesn't change the conclusion that you are failing to understand the difference between possible and very , very , very , very unlikely.

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I’ve been looking without success to confirm, but I think those numbers are payload only.

The big surveillance balloon carried an extended array of trusses and panels that was long enough, though it surely did not have the mass or even volume of the three buses.

200 feet for the gasbag sounds about right.

Fogdog said:

dammit.

Read my post more carefully. The second one shot down was said to be the size of a bus. The first one was said to be the size of three buses, or 105 feet diameter. If you want to believe it was 200 feet, run the numbers yourself. It doesn't change the conclusion that you are failing to understand the difference between possible and very , very , very , very unlikely.

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Retraction.

An F-22 is 62 ft long and provides a handy scale object in this photo.

cannabineer said:

I’ve been looking without success to confirm, but I think those numbers are payload only.

The big surveillance balloon carried an extended array of trusses and panels that was long enough, though it surely did not have the mass or even volume of the three buses.

200 feet for the gasbag sounds about right.

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I double checked and you are right the array of the first balloon was the size of two or three busses depending on the source.

Doesn't change the conclusion but OK, for the sake of argument:

200 ft balloon diameter, 1 mm resolution at the eye (.003 ft), 70,000 ft balloon altitude, 40,000 airliner flight altitude; 5280 ft/mile

Diameter x 1/dist. = .003; dist. = 200 x 1/.003 = 66,666 ft = 12.6 miles ; At 12.6 miles, the 1st balloon would be about 1 mm wide to the eye.

70,000 ft - 40,000 ft = 30,000 ft or 5.7 miles distance at the least if one flew directly past the first one.

How large would that be to the eye? 200 x 1/30,000 = .007 ft = 1.7 mm So, one would have to see a spec in the air that is less than 2 mm wide to the eye and 30000 ft overhead.

That's if the pilot were looking directly overhead. Normally, they would be looking in an arc ahead of them. The first larger balloon would be 6 miles overhead. Why would they be spending much time looking there? So the conclusion is the same. Yes, it's possible but very, very, very , very unlikely.

cannabineer said:

Retraction.

An F-22 is 62 ft long and provides a handy scale object in this photo.

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The array is a better scaling figure. It's between 70 and 105 ft in length. 200 ft diameter is plausible but probably the maximum likely diameter.

Fogdog said:

I double checked and you are right the array of the first balloon was the size of two or three busses depending on the source.

Doesn't change the conclusion but OK, for the sake of argument:

200 ft balloon diameter, 1 mm resolution at the eye (.003 ft), 70,000 ft balloon altitude, 40,000 airliner flight altitude; 5280 ft/mile

Diameter x 1/dist. = .003; dist. = 200 x 1/.003 = 66,666 ft = 12.6 miles ; At 12.6 miles, the 1st balloon would be about 1 mm wide to the eye.

70,000 ft - 40,000 ft - 30,000 ft or 5.7 miles distance at the least if one flew directly past the first one.

How large would that be to the eye? 200 x 1/30,000 = .007 ft = 1.7 mm

That's if the pilot were looking directly overhead. Normally, they would be looking in an arc ahead of them. The first larger balloon would be 6 miles overhead. Why would they be spending much time looking there? So the conclusion is the same. Yes, it's possible but very, very, very , very unlikely.

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Note retraction. I’m revising gasbag diameter to about 80 feet.

By sky color, the photo was taken
1) from jetliner altitude
2) with very favorable lighting.

The F-22 has a surface finish that makes it disappear against most sky conditions when viewed from ground. They fly it often around here, and its optical slipperiness above 20000 AGL has to be [not seen] to be believed. When that peculiar ribbon contrail fades out, following the aircraft is usually impossible without specular reflection, even using my somewhat specialist optical aids.

cannabineer said:

Retraction.

An F-22 is 62 ft long and provides a handy scale object in this photo.

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Judging distance against infinity is pretty difficult. I was visiting a mile long Glacier in Alaska in a 500 person boat. I swear this one bird was going to land on a rock on the Glacier... It landed about 1/2 the distance in the water.

DoubleAtotheRON said:

Judging distance against infinity is pretty difficult. I was visiting a mile long Glacier in Alaska in a 500 person boat. I swear this one bird was going to land on a rock on the Glacier... It landed about 1/2 the distance in the water.

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except the Raptor shown is at the target’s altitude plus-minus 2%.
You keep making nonqualifying comparisons.

cannabineer said:

except the Raptor shown is at the target’s altitude plus-minus 2%.
You keep making nonqualifying comparisons.

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Just stating a fact. I didn't know you were up in that jet.

DoubleAtotheRON said:

Just stating a fact. I didn't know you were up in that jet.

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An irrelevant anecdote followed by a fallacious claim.

You keep making nonqualifying comparisons, and are now resorting to ad hominem when effectively challenged.

I have observed these things directly. You have not, and are trying to pretend that your analogies are informative. They’re not.

cannabineer said:

I have observed these things directly.

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Spy balloons?... and you're such an expert on focal distance against infinity that you can surely claim that it's within 2% of it's altitude?

DoubleAtotheRON said:

Spy balloons?... and you're such an expert on focal distance against infinity that you can surely claim that it's within 2% of it's altitude?

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how do you know the glacier wasn’t 12400 feet long?

cannabineer said:

how do you know the glacier wasn’t 12400 feet long?

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Because it was a mile long against the shoreline verified by the State of Alaska. Doesn't look like a mile wide... but it is.