U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by blululu on Saturday February 04, 2023 @11:19PM (#34661803)

This is a clever method and I appreciate that you posted the Wolfram alpha link - always happy when people show their work and I did not realize that you could do things like include (diameter of moon) as variables with it. This is a nit, but if you're busting out an AI enhanced calculator there is no need to make a 40% rounding of 70K to 100k. I got ~200 ft across.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by Rebelgecko on Saturday February 04, 2023 @11:51PM (#34662009)

I think some of that fudging was because the observer wasn't directly beneath the balloon

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by willis936 on Sunday February 05, 2023 @07:43AM (#34664468)

Indeed and trying to estimate how much someone panned across a clear blue sky with more than 20 degree precision isn't how I wanted to spend my Saturday. 80% of the answer for 20% of the effort.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by evolve2k on Sunday February 05, 2023 @12:58AM (#34662368)

60m (200ft) - 85m (285ft) for the rest of the world.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by ghayes on Sunday February 05, 2023 @05:22AM (#34663612)

Which, at 40ft (12m) per school bus, is 5-7 school buses.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by junon on Sunday February 05, 2023 @07:46AM (#34664493)

Just a tip - put natural language variables in parenthesis. Helps disambiguate in a lot of cases and saves time in the long run if you use WA often.

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