Things in the sky…

Hello, all. Just wandering if there was any intelligent and insightful thoughts on the balloon, car-shape, cylinder… activity and the downing of these recently. Sure it’s been discussed elsewhere in ATS, but this particular forum is one I appreciate as it’s less political and emotional.
Think this activity is common, but for some reason there is no longer allowance, or did objects always get shot down at this frequency, just not reported? Or… you know… alien invasion.

Thanks!

a reply to: phansett

could it be this simple?

link to a $16 high altitude balloon kit.

In my opinion, all this alien invasion, balloon crap, seems to have 3 main objectives:

1) Distraction. By talking of this BS, people stop talking about the mRNA clot-shot injuries.

2) Fearp0rn. A Cold War 2.0. Basically, create the idea that there is a "war" going on and that there is technology out there that we don't know. This was the most common thing during the Cold War. It was living in a constant psy-op. They even made people believe that the Russians were using mental waves to kill Americans, telepathic assassination, lols.

3) Corruption. Create the acceptance for a new government defense program related to space. The "Space Wars", which basically means stealing trillions of dollars from the American taxpayer to give it to multinational corporations part of the Military Industrial Complex. That's how corruption works, specially in the United States, since the only exporting industry of the US is war, they don't have anything else.

I'm leaning toward the China balloon set off a huge rigamarole and NORAD adjusted filters and now they are reacting to whatever their surveillance apparatus is telling them, all the while Russia saw how freaked everybody has got and are sending as many balloons in to the airspace as they can

From the Drive:


t.co...

originally posted by: network dude
a reply to: phansett

could it be this simple?

link to a $16 high altitude balloon kit.

Doesn't look cylindrical... from any angle.

a reply to: flice

Googled "cylindrical balloons". Was not disappointed! Works every time!


You should see all the wonderful types!


I do like this one in particular. The name and the familiarity in combination... woah!

Source

Alright. Timing is everything. Not a balloon, but first time I’ve ever seen anything unusual. I live SW chicago suburbs (Channahon) - 47mi sw of Midway.
My wife had dogs out back and hollered there was a line in the sky. So I peaked out back, grabbed phone and went out garage. Below is the video. First thought string of drones, but not common for my area and I think too high altitude. It was above where planes landing at midway fly. One was crossing over about same time. Next thought - starling satellite string? That’s sort of where I am thinking now, just never seen them before and I would have thought they would be higher?

share.icloud.com...

a reply to: phansett

According to Starlink tracker Timings with good visibility
(past) 6:36 pm, 12 Feb 2023 which lines up with your observations.

Thanks, litterbaux! Appreciate the link for future, too.

a reply to: litterbaux

originally posted by: phansett
Hello, all. Just wandering if there was any intelligent and insightful thoughts on the balloon, car-shape, cylinder… activity and the downing of these recently. Sure it’s been discussed elsewhere in ATS, but this particular forum is one I appreciate as it’s less political and emotional.
Think this activity is common, but for some reason there is no longer allowance, or did objects always get shot down at this frequency, just not reported? Or… you know… alien invasion.

Thanks!

First, I am a professional aerospace engineer; I design lighter-than-air craft, rotorcraft, fixed wing aircraft, rockets, and spacecraft for a living. Second, I am a UFO witness; I’ve seen about 4 good ones in my life. So, I’m perfectly happy to conclude that a sighting is or is not conventional, based on the evidence.

The first question to ask about a mysterious sighting like these small cylindrical craft is are they are doing anything or behaving in a way that can’t be explained by conventional aerospace engineering? So far, I haven’t heard about anything that would lead to that conclusion.

One of the first things that stood out to me is that the first object that was shot down near Prudhoe Bay had been tracked continuously for 24 hours (including overnight) at approximately the same altitude before it was shot down. Does that mean it was an unconventional craft? It depends on how fast it was moving. If it was moving at basically the local wind speed (plus or minus a little bit), then no, it was not a UFO, it could have been just a balloon. Based on everything I’ve heard, I don’t know which of those cases is true. If it was a balloon, it would have been a particular kind of balloon known as a constant-volume balloon—sometimes also known as a super pressure balloon. This kind of balloon has a skin that doesn’t expand, so it will rise up to an altitude where the weight of the balloon and all its contents exactly equals the weight of the air it displaces and then it will neither rise nor descend from that altitude unless and until it looses lift gas (usually Helium) by leakage through the skin. The Mylar balloons that you can buy as party gifts, etc. are examples of constant-volume balloons. They behave entirely differently than weather balloons, which will ascend continuously—getting bigger all the time—until they pop. That usually takes a couple of hours and altitudes above 60,000 ft.

So, if these small objects are balloons, then they are constant-volume balloons designed to float at about 40,000 ft. The fact that they were described as shiny, aluminum colored is consistent with them being made out of metalized Mylar or equivalent.

They were described as being about the size of a small automobile—a VW Beetle, specifically. I did some order-of-magnitude calculations to figure out how much volume that is and how much lift such a balloon would have at 40,000 ft if it were filled with Helium. The answer is that it would lift no more than about 10-15 pounds. That’s enough for a small payload consisting of solar arrays, batteries, and electronics.

So far, there’s nothing I’ve heard in the MSM that would require the conclusion that these were anything other than small spy balloons.

However, the proof will be in whatever is recovered from the crash sites. If the total amount of material recovered from an individual crash is significantly greater than 10-15 pounds, then the object was not lighter-than-air, and we would need to explain how it was able to stay aloft for at least 24 hours with no visible means of support.

I’m still keeping an open mind, but so far there’s nothing that screams “unconventional”.

In the days before this site was overrun by political trolls, there was a wonderful member (and moderator) named Kandinsky who had an intriguing though not absolutely original take on UFOs and other strange phenomena. He opined that whatever power was behind them liked playing tricks on human beings, confusing us and driving us crazy. This, he said, was why so many UFO reports were incongruous, bizarre and often unintentionally hilarious. It was also why they were so inconsistent and difficult to verify. I believe this view of the origins of unexplained phenomena was first theorized by a well-known French ufologist with an unsavoury political reputation, Jacques Vallée. The American Fortean ‘investigator’ John A. Keel was another who believed the same.

My objection to this line of argument was a simple slash of Occam's Razor; you didn't need hidden powers to explain the bizarreness of UFO sightings, or sightings of ghosts, the Virgin Mary or dear old Mothman either, when human frailty and the intrinsic unreliability of eyewitness accounts are sufficient to explain their odd features and inconsistencies.

I’m a confirmed scientific materialist and sceptic. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. But I do think Kandinsky’s ideas seem to explain rather nicely why the appearance and behaviour of UFOs seen by the US military (at least) has changed since they were redesignated UAPs. You know, their absurd acceleration and manoeuvrability, the way they seem to appear and disappear, both to human eyes and to radar, at will, the pleasure they seem to take in both confirming and confounding our expectations.

So while putnam6’s explanation (‘NORAD adjusted filters...reacting to whatever their surveillance apparatus is telling them’) is certainly plausible, I put it to you that the suddenly increased number of sightings may not be due purely to this. If these ‘objects’ were always so common as they now seem to be, airline passengers and others would have seen them in larger numbers than have ever been reported.

What we’re seeing now is definitely not mundane, nor do I believe the protestations of Zaphod58 and others that the sightings and shootings-down are of foreign military technology. If it were that, I think our governments would know. And even if they know more than they’re telling us, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t have a clue what this is.

No, we’re seeing more UAPs because whatever’s behind the phenomenon has noticed that we’ve noticed, and is responding by sending more of them.

The deo ex machina are toying with us.

Update from the Pentagon...Sunday evening 2.12.2023

JUST IN - Pentagon does not know to what keeps these "objects" aloft, unknown propulsion systems.

"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason," says U.S. Air Force General Glen VanHerck.

More at: redstate.com...

a reply to: network dude

Made in China?

a reply to: Astyanax

A bunch of alien teenagers out for joyrides in their parents space ship coming to Earth to troll humans?

I can see that.