PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
Well this escalated quickly.
Tolerant liberal? Next, you'll be telling us the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny actually exist.![]()
I guess you hadn't heard yet....Tolerant liberal? Next, you'll be telling us the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny actually exist.![]()
If so, and if that is remotely rational, the deflated balloon must have been expected to slow it down. Surface tension is a function of kinetic energy and surface area. Just prior to impact, its kinetic energy would be one half its mass times the square of its velocity. At impact, all that kinetic energy is transferred to itself and to the water. The part that hits first effectively stops while what's above it keeps moving downwards, compressing it. Its said that falling into water from a great height is like hitting concrete. That's because of its surface tension. But a lot depends on the probe's shape, whether boxy and solid or skeletal beams. I really hope they show what's found, if it is found.was for it to have a softer landing in the water
Didn't we just double our presence in Guam, and the Philippines?
China had to react. So they sent a big visible balloon over our skies. They have satellites, some are spying. We have three times as many.
One of the explanations I heard of why they waited to shoot it down was for it to have a softer landing in the water, and maybe it wouldn't break up as much, so we could gather more info about the tech they have.
More like the U.S. had to react to what China was doing (fortifying more tiny islands and turning them into fortresses in area where the waters/airways are... somewhat disputed I guess).
I still can’t believe we let it fly basically across the entire US before we took it out. The talk is they didn’t want to hurt anybody on the ground. Christ it went over rural Montana!
The aircraft carrier's value as a strategic weapon against peer adversaries during total war peaked in WWII. The advent of anti-ship missiles and the ability to accurately target surface combatants over the horizon changed the design and tactics of surface combatants more in 20 years than the prior century.@Stress_Test , I agree. With Russia, and I think China touting that they now have hypersonic missiles, which makes them virtually impossible to shoot down, I suppose that makes our aircraft carriers somewhat obsolete. Therefore it is imperative for us to have aircraft strategically land-based.
And it only took the USAF half a week to do a job a presumed superpower with a military budget bigger than most countries' annual revenues would be expected to perform in 30 minutes. Says a lot about the country's air defense, doesn't it?
Likely better image quality than satellites can produce since you're observing from a mere ~11 miles up as opposed to the ~150 mile lower limit of LEO, but likely nothing that orbital recon didn't already ID. And the balloon's progress was slow and the trajectory relatively predictable thus easy to counter - or even troll.Sensitive projects monitor positions of satellites anyway to make sure they're not out in view during a sat overflight. And the existing infrastructure (missile silos) have already been well-photographed by existing Russian (if not Chinese) satellites by this point. I can't see there was much anything to gain from air-to-ground surveillance by this balloon.
The outrage being manufactured over this issue has been ... impressive.Anybody who's freaked out about this, just take a deep breath and try to relax. This isn't Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Most (or all...) of the ranting and raving you'll be seeing from politicians is nothing but hot air (hah, the jokes practically write themselves!)
The outrage being manufactured over this issue has been ... impressive.
I have little hope recent events could ever lead to any balloon accord or SALT V treaty limiting strategic use of balloons.
Food for thought -
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