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A comment on U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon. Parent comment

Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by misja111 on Sunday February 05, 2023 @06:02AM (#34663825)
But weather balloons are typically much smaller. See e.g. https://www.stratoflights.com/en/shop/weather-balloon-3000/, this is the largest one they sell and it has a bursting diameter of 45ft
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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by kgwgk on Sunday February 05, 2023 @06:12AM (#34663884)
I’m pretty sure that they had a budget higher than $700 and wanted it to carry more than 3kg of payload.
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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by mactunes on Sunday February 05, 2023 @07:05AM (#34664219)
This is definitely not one of these balloons. Check out the discontinued Google Loon project to see a closer representation of what the world was looking at.

I have used weather balloons like the one you linked and I can assure you that these will burst after only a few hours in the air.

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