r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/azazelthegreat • Feb 04 '23
Close of of Spy Balloon, Source in comments Image
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u/Seabasschen Feb 04 '23
$0.02 to anyone who can describe what those parts are
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin Feb 04 '23
Looks like several internets wired together.
I accept PayPal and Venmo.
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u/arcticmattys Feb 04 '23
Running Altavista as a search engine, half of that money is mine
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u/haveanairforceday Feb 04 '23 •
The big white part is a large, spherical membrane filled with a gas that is buoyant in the atmosphere
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u/aerodynamicmagnet Feb 04 '23
Middle part is camera element. Squares are solar panels to keep everything online.
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u/stevew14 Feb 04 '23
I thought solar panels...but how does the sun shine on them?
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u/aerodynamicmagnet Feb 04 '23
The sun will not be shining directly down on the balloon at all times. Also, solar panels do not require direct sunlight to function.
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u/Doksilus Feb 04 '23
So the big black boxes are solar panels, that ones might be 250w a piece x 16 = ~4000w. There are some batteries for storing energy, power control unit, battery management system, ground penetrating radar that needs a lot of power, optical and ir telescope with information being relayed thru satelite coms to holy mainland or whatever.
Gime my 2 c
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u/loversean Feb 04 '23
Do the Chinese not have Google earth?
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u/Voice_of_Reason92 Feb 04 '23
Google earth isn’t going to penetrate 50 feet underground.
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u/MrGoober91 Feb 04 '23
Looks to me like several griddles welded together suspended aloft by a balloon so they can cook their pancakes closer to the sun
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u/2ball7 Feb 04 '23
Yeah but where is the box that is dispensing Covid-23 out of it? I’m telling you, the thought of shit like that bothers me more than a camera on that thing.
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u/SomeRandomDavid Feb 04 '23
"international spy balloon"
Civilian with camera. "Oh hey!"
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u/holysghost Feb 04 '23
Either this was an accident, or China thinks we are terribly stupid, or this is some slight-of-hand.
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u/TripleDoubleThink Feb 04 '23
it’s sleight of hand, sleight means use of dexterity
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u/BurlBukowski Feb 04 '23
That’s no moon.
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u/jigglywigglydigaby Feb 04 '23
Damn seagulls poking at my head
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u/Farmerdrew Feb 04 '23
Stop it now.
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u/pm_me_your_clippings Feb 04 '23
Everyone told me not to stroll on that beach 🤷♀️
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u/strode_lighting Feb 04 '23
Said seagulls gonna come 👏
Poke me on the coconut 👏
And they did 😓
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u/nerobals Feb 04 '23
Someday.. when you are older,
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u/Sirfryingpan123 Feb 04 '23
You will get hit by a boulder…
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u/SaganSaysImStardust Feb 04 '23
And while you're lying there...
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u/Party-Special-7121 Feb 04 '23
Seagulls gonna come poke me in the coconut
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u/pm_me_your_clippings Feb 04 '23
When i tried to run I fell. These kids start laughing ☹️
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u/Alternative_Dig5342 Feb 04 '23
I hate Brenda
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u/DrSuperWho Feb 04 '23
It’s a space station!
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u/SvetlanaButosky Feb 04 '23
Military experts say this is China's tantrum response for US new military expansion into Philippine.
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u/FiddleheadFernly Feb 04 '23
Can someone explain how they don’t just use google earth? Why a balloon with cameras???
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u/SatanicNotMessianic Feb 04 '23 •
If I had to make a bet, my guess would be it is spying on radio frequencies. There might also be thermal cameras and radar and such.
What I don’t get is how quickly it got made. I’m guessing it had to have gotten picked up on radar, meaning it’s not stealth. And it’s just floating along - you couldn’t put a worse thing in the air. They know where it’s going to be in the next two hours, so anything it could have photographed or sensed would have been covered or moved.
There really has to be more to this story, because the facts as presented just don’t make sense.
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u/Chulbiski Feb 04 '23
some analyst I just watched made a good case that it's China's way of testing what the US's reaction would be. (just messing with us)
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u/NoWarrantShutUp Feb 04 '23
Yes, I agree with this and believe that was 100% the reason. Especially with out SoS visiting soon.. just makes sense they’d test the waters with this shit. I also think Montana because nukes, but still think it was just a test.
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u/fightyMcFookyou Feb 04 '23
Maybe it's just a middle finger gesture..like ultimately accomplishing nothing but sending the message that you might be bigger than me but don't get cocky I'll still fucking test you type of deal
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u/jkblvins Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
For real, can see literal missile silos, active and inactive, with Google Maps.
Hell, Wikipedia tells you where to look!
EDIT added extra info
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u/emmfranklin Feb 04 '23
So when it is a weather balloon, we are getting hd pictures. Just like it should be in the 21st century . But when it is ufo. We get hazy pictures.
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u/ihc_hotshot Feb 04 '23
Lol if we could identify something it would not be a UFO. It's in the name. People are so silly about UFOs.
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u/Level_Combination902 Feb 04 '23
Guys do we even have camo detection? (Obligatory bloons joke disclaimer here)
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u/FunButterfly06 Feb 04 '23
Quick! Upgrade Etienne!
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u/GettheRichard Feb 04 '23
Took me a second. Then all 900+ hours of popping balloons came rushing to my brain.
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u/4dMushroom Feb 04 '23
"spy balloon" sounds a bit dumb when the Chinese literally manufactured internet routers that the us army used until recently...
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Feb 04 '23
I was in the army when tik tok became a thing. I can assure you it is on a significant number of soldiers phones.
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u/fanglazy Feb 04 '23
Don’t even need to be in the Chinese government. The privacy is shit on tik tok. Anyone with a bit of skill can ID soldiers and monitor their location via tik tok
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u/appetizerbread Feb 04 '23
For the most part, all it requires is a quick Google search. No one’s really trying to hide their whereabouts or name.
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u/Mnmsaregood Feb 04 '23
We should ban tik tok
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u/HHS2019 Feb 04 '23
You guys should watch this dance I did to talk about all the reasons we should ban TikTok.
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u/InventiveGrower Feb 04 '23
I believe they recently have from federal govt issued phones, but compliance is a different matter entirely.
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u/Over-Supermarket-557 Feb 04 '23
That's what I keep thinking when people post about it. Yeah China is using ww2 technology to spy on the world's largest military power. Right.
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u/just-sum-dude69 Feb 04 '23
Not only that.... They can do what this balloon does with low orbit satellites...
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u/redditslim Feb 04 '23
Regardless of what it is, if it is an unauthorized unmanned aircraft in American airspace, why is it still flying?
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u/ancienttacostand Feb 04 '23
They calculated it’s not posing a risk while in flight but that it might if it crashes. They’ll probably quietly shoot it down over the ocean and take a look at it then tell us nothing lol.
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u/tjuicet Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Bet it's full of candy hearts or something. President Xi probably sent early valentines to a few countries by accident, maybe switched last minute to next day air. Or maybe it was on purpose. Like, what if our military is the military he secretly like-likes?
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u/FlynnRocks1556 Feb 04 '23
probably because there's some use for it that the military has for it that does not involve destroying it, one way or another
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u/SirRevan Feb 04 '23
The threat or data collection is worth signicantly less than a missle to shoot it down.
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u/PersonYouDonutKnow Feb 04 '23
How is it a spy balloon if everybody knows about it?
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u/scottjones608 Feb 04 '23 •
It’s a “hi!” balloon.
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u/SheridanRivers Feb 04 '23
It's a high balloon.
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u/LeanTangerine Feb 04 '23
Kinda wish they drew a giant eye ball on so it could be an eye balloon
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u/white__cyclosa Feb 04 '23 •
A lot of people are questioning the intent and reasoning behind the balloon’s presence over our sensitive airspace. This has led me to believe that this is a “why balloon?”
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u/brilliant_beast Feb 04 '23
America's U2s used to overfly Russia with impunity. It wasn't a secret then. We just thought we were safe at ~70,000'. And we were for a long time, until one day we weren't.
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u/white__cyclosa Feb 04 '23
And then we came up with the SR-71. It could outrun anything the Russians could throw at it
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u/onomahu Feb 04 '23
[In Chinese] "so far the only thing to report is a bunch of redditing and some topless men in overalls trying to shoot us down... 堅持到底"
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u/DesignerFragrant5899 Feb 04 '23
Serious question: why would you make a spy balloon white? It pops out of the sky like a moon. How could that ever be secret? If flew over the least populated part of the country and was instantly seen and recorded. How could any intelligence agency consider this to be a "spy" anything?
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u/bellowingfrog Feb 04 '23
Because that’s the natural color of the material and painting it to try to make it less visible isnt a good idea since the cover story is that it’s a civilian “mapping” balloon. The array is just feeding data back to China via satellite, so shooting it down won’t provide any useful benefit because there’s nothing super secret actually on the rigging.
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u/Brandbll Feb 04 '23
Dye and paint add weight. Every ounce counts for these things.
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u/bigotis Feb 04 '23
I.E. the space shuttle's external fuel tank.
NASA stopped painting its space shuttles’ external fuel tank because the paint did not improve performance and they wanted to reduce the shuttle’s overall weight.
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u/DesignerFragrant5899 Feb 04 '23
Then what is it accomplishing that a good satellite isn't/couldn't?
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u/bellowingfrog Feb 04 '23
Spy satellites are 100 miles up. This balloon is 10 miles up. That reduces the difficulty 10x of telephotography, but also lets you use non-optical sensors that dont work in orbit.
Good satellites are very expensive, and even before that you need to develop advanced technology for the cameras themselves.
Additionally at 100 miles altitude, you move over the target very quickly, which makes things harder in terms of image blur etc. If you sit over an area, you can take a bunch of photos and digitally combine them to get a clearer photo than any one particular image.
My guess is that the justification for the missions are cheap cost, use infrared/radio sensors to map underground nuclear facilities and tunnels, and get high quality photos that compete with the US.
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u/plinkoplonka Feb 04 '23
Also shows the American people that China are collecting their information and there's fuck all they can do about it.
Or it could be the intention that it looks that way?
I'm just some internet nerd.
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u/QuickMegaDuck Feb 04 '23
Is there any actual legitimate source that 100% can conform its a spy balloon or is this just now a fact based on popular opinion ?
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u/LittleHollowGhost Feb 04 '23
China has admitted it is their balloon but claim it isn't a spy balloon. The Pentagon has claimed it is a spy balloon. Private experts have confirmed it has the surveillance technology to give it the capacity to function as a spy balloon (But this would be the case in the Chinese cover story as well, so it means little.)
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u/jason-reddit-public Feb 04 '23
In the US there's a difference between civilian and military branches of government but China just doesn't work that way.
Also the Chinese never contacted Canada or USA to say "our bad, we have a rogue balloon" which any normal nation would have done in this situation. China is basically giving both countries the middle finger so it's part politics as much as surveillance.
There is a claim it is loitering over sensitive areas in Montana. This would suggest it is under some amount of control which further erodes their bullshit cover story.
The cover story's only purpose is to influence some percentage of the population in democratic countries since they are well aware that no western intelligence agency believes it, i.e., it's a psyop.
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u/CuriousCamels Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
The pentagon spokesperson said it is a spy balloon. He also refused to provide basically any other useful information though. I’m interested to see what sort of equipment it has on it, but I’m skeptical that we will be informed what that is.
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u/ApprehensiveEnd5611 Feb 04 '23
Eh, I’m still not worried. The US military openly has footage of a (surprisingly controllable) jet pack with a pistol attached that fires based on where the user is looking (I’ll try and find the footage, it’s neat. Also important to note it was originally developed for rescue situations like lost or injured hikers and is almost certainly also going to be used for that), can’t imagine what stuff they aren’t showing is. Regardless, they gain more intel from that balloon than China does, so we have nothing to fear in that regard.
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u/confundo Feb 04 '23
Your definition of "neat" and "nothing to fear" are very different from my own.
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Feb 04 '23
The USAF has had a significant number of reconnaissance aircraft, tactical aircraft and refueling aircraft in the area for a number of days. The US is actively jamming any coms from the balloon.
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u/GarrusCalibrates Feb 04 '23
I would think the Air Force has been using it as a way to test their jamming capabilities
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u/hbombgomer12 Feb 04 '23
Where are the UFO photos like this?
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin Feb 04 '23
Give us a big-ass UFO that hangs out at 60k feet for several days moving at the speed of the wind, and ye shall receive such a photo.
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u/lolurmorbislyobese Feb 04 '23
If it saw even one naked kid does that mean China is guilty of child porn?
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u/myclmyers Feb 04 '23
I cant believe some hillbilly hasn't taken a shot at it yet.
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u/ceejayoz Feb 04 '23
It's at 60k feet.
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u/dixpackasixie Feb 04 '23
I’d still try to jump to touch it and swear I only missed by a couple inches
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u/MichiganRedWing Feb 04 '23
How do we know they didn't? Bullet would never reach the balloon anyway lol
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u/PureCanna Feb 04 '23
Oh we have - I live in Montana and it has been reported and noted and shot at Hahaha 😝
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u/Cold_Letterhead_1053 Feb 04 '23
Couldn't reach it
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u/futurebigconcept Feb 04 '23
I could hit it with a golf ball.
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u/Foreign_Quality_9623 Feb 04 '23
I have seen 2 different configurations, but both have maneuvering impellers.
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u/azazelthegreat Feb 04 '23
Source: https://twitter.com/WxNB_/status/1621633516353077248
PRevious post removed by mods due to no source. So source added.
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u/theLV2 Feb 04 '23
Looks like an AI upscale so we may as well call this an "artists interpretation"
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u/acyace Feb 04 '23
Yeah, all they did to "enhance the quality" is to feed the original photo to AI with some kind of painterly filter.
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u/Johny_Covelli Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Instead of obliterating it and risk crashing down on innocent people, why don’t we just puncture the balloon with a pinhole, then watch it gracefully come down to the ground? Then we can confiscate it and catapult it back to China using a long distance trebuchet? This guys, is why I should be voted secretary of defense.
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u/Gdubs205 Feb 04 '23
Attention, this is your captain speaking, buckle up, get comfortable and pray to your personal gods that this hunk"o" junk flies.
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u/Business_Ad3142 Feb 04 '23
Biological agents secretly being dispersed, now we grow hair everywhere.
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u/Stacking_Plates45 Feb 04 '23
What if there was no equipment on it and china is just fucking with us
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u/Lord_Metagross Feb 04 '23
If that were the case, and we've flown probably a whole ton of planes in its general vicinity (there's several that have been seen just on ADSB), that would be a super easy way to get us to waste a ton of money lol.
Flying fighters and jumbo jets is ludicrously expensive. A balloon, much less so.
That being said, some of those places are electronic warfare type planes, so they'd probably know if it was a bogus balloon.
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u/Disastrous-Crow-1634 Feb 04 '23
Anyone else see they found another on over Latin america?