The Balloon

[Anomalocaris]

Let’s be honest,  no balloon the size of a small car can possibly carry any substantial intelligence package.   A balloon’s carrying capacity must necessarily be less than the weight of a volume of air at the balloon’s operating altitude equal to the size of the balloon itself

A balloon the size of a small car, say 10 cubic meters, would therefore have a carrying capacity at 40k feet of 4 lbs minus the weight of balloon itself.

I'm not an electronics engineer, but it seems that you could pack a fair bit of microminiaturization into a four lb (or slightly smaller) payload.

Boru

the 4 lbs would need to include a battery that would function for the duration of balloon flight at -70 degrees temperature of 40k feet.    a add-on battery to enable an iphone to work for 4-5 days in much milder conditions already weigh a pound.  

in addition to make it worthwhile to evesdrop from a balloon rather than a satellite it would need to specialize in short wave reception that is blocked by the ionosphere from being done in space.   to do so efficiently it would need a significant antenna.    it would also need to have its own transmitter so it can send intercepted signal back to its master.    to really add value to signal intelligence it probably needs a directional antenna and a gps receiver so it can do some geolocation of the signals it intercepts. 

even if it is disposable and not meant for recovery, it would still need a beacon so it’s masters knows where to go look for it in order to receive a download of the signals it intercepted and recorded.

[Anomalocaris]

basically if the chinese can spy on us from compact cat sized balloons then we might as well stop transmitting because they can swarm us with thousands of balloons, too many for us to shoot down at the rate of half a million dollars per AIM-9X missile and 20K per flight hour for a f-22 or F-35.

The initial 200 foot balloon with its bus sized equipment bay probably cost more than what it took to shoot it down. but the compact car sized balloons almost certainly cost very little compared to effort to shoot them down.

[Neo-Scholastic]

basically if the chinese can spy on us from compact cat sized balloons then we might as well stop transmitting because they can swarm us with thousands of balloons, too many for us to shoot down at the rate of half a million dollars per AIM-9X missile and 20K per flight hour for a f-22 or F-35.

The initial 200 foot balloon with its bus sized equipment bay probably cost more than what it took to shoot it down. but the compact car sized balloons almost certainly cost very little compared to effort to shoot them down.

...of which most would be decoys to those few armed with EMP warheads which could take out several cities.

[Anomalocaris]

an EMP warhead that weigh less than 4 lbs. not likely.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Balloons carrying nukes serenely launched to quite literally the winds of fate?

I'll give it points for creativity, I suppose.

[Rev. Rye]

So, an update. The Rover that started this whole mess has had its debris recovered, and it appears that the other three were likely not actually from China. Indeed, one of them may have come from my neck of the woods (Specifically Winnetka.)In fairness, that balloon may have originally been manufactured in China before being put to use just circumnavigating the globe.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Some of the sanity-adjacent crowd are saying that the 'sudden' (it isn't) appearance of these balloons and whatnot is the result of extraterrestrial activity.

This is not as unreasonable as it sounds. I've often felt that aliens with the ability to cross thousands of lightyears in undetectable hyperships would, upon arriving here, immediately release a flotilla of easily detectable balloons so they could, you know, spy on us.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some of the sanity-adjacent crowd are saying that the 'sudden' (it isn't) appearance of these balloons and whatnot is the result of extraterrestrial activity.

This is not as unreasonable as it sounds. I've often felt that aliens with the ability to cross thousands of lightyears in undetectable hyperships would, upon arriving here, immediately release a flotilla of easily detectable balloons so they could, you know, spy on us.

Boru

Straws will be clutched.

[Anomalocaris]

Some of the sanity-adjacent crowd are saying that the 'sudden' (it isn't) appearance of these balloons and whatnot is the result of extraterrestrial activity.

This is not as unreasonable as it sounds. I've often felt that aliens with the ability to cross thousands of lightyears in undetectable hyperships would, upon arriving here, immediately release a flotilla of easily detectable balloons so they could, you know, spy on us.

Boru

How do you know those are not trans-dimensional quantum singularities disguised as balloons in order to conform to the prime directive?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Some of the sanity-adjacent crowd are saying that the 'sudden' (it isn't) appearance of these balloons and whatnot is the result of extraterrestrial activity.

This is not as unreasonable as it sounds. I've often felt that aliens with the ability to cross thousands of lightyears in undetectable hyperships would, upon arriving here, immediately release a flotilla of easily detectable balloons so they could, you know, spy on us.

Boru

How do you know those are not trans-dimensional quantum singularities disguised as balloons in order to conform to the prime directive?

I don’t.

Boru