Chinese Weather Balloons, and Should You Worry About Them?

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I *seriously* doubt any of these have been legitimate weather balloons.

I have some experience in this area. OK, it was 20+ years ago, but little has changed.

The weather balloons used by the National Weather Service are launched twice a day (0:00 and 12:00 GMT) simultaneously (within a few minutes) by just under 100 locations in the US. The radiosonde is in a cardboard box, about 2 inches thick, by 4 inches wide, by 10 inches tall. The balloon is inflated to about 4 feet in diameter when launched, and will expand to several times that when they finally burst. They usually burst at about 80K feet, there's not much interesting weather above that altitude. The balloons are filled with helium (I seriously doubt anyone in the NSW is filling them with hydrogen because everyone is afraid they will explode). While the balloon is filling, the radiosonde is prepared. It uses a water-activated battery (about 18 volts), which has to be filled with a measured amount of water and attached to the 'sonde. Nowdays, the 'sonde is connected to a computer to set the calibration for the temperature and humidity. This is a really big deal. Back when I was doing it, the Vaisala brand 'sondes came with a punched paper tape that had to be run through the receiver. Boy! was that a pain! The tape had to be pulled through the reader at just the right speed, and had to be pulled through at a consistent speed. Just a little off, and you got an error. When the computer says everything is OK, the 'sonde is connected to a tether attached to a parachute (ours were orange crepe paper that had been treated with something so that the would last for a bit when wet, but would eventually fall apart). The tether is attached to a "drop-down reel" which is attached to the balloon. The reel slowly unwinds about 30 feet of cord after the balloon is released so the 'sonde is not in the "shadow" of the balloon. When everything is ready, the balloon is released, and away everything goes. ALL the NWS 'sondes transmit on 1680 MHz - you can listen to them if you have a scanner and are close enough. The 400-410 MHz range is still reserved for met. research.

In doing research, we also used drop 'sondes like are used in hurricane research. same basic internals and procedure, except that they are encased in a phenolic cylinder rather than a cardboard box, and went down rather than up. We used them because they are tougher and could be reused.

This isn't to say that some of these might not be legitimate weather research devices, they could be. But I strongly think they would be readily identifiable as such. They're going to have a bright parachute attached for one thing, and they will be transmitting on an identifiable frequency
 
OverTheTop said:
The radiosonde balloons generally pop at 80-90k'.
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What if they don't? Like a slight leak that keeps them neutrally buoyant at some altitude. Is the balloon popping an 8+ sigma near zero defect process?
 
jderimig said:
What if they don't? Like a slight leak that keeps them neutrally buoyant at some altitude. Is the balloon popping an 8+ sigma near zero defect process?
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For latex balloons it is. There are redundant systems that cause their failure. They pop if the pressure differential stretches them too much and if not, the latex fails because sunlight weakens it. If neither of those get it, helium is constantly leaking through the latex, reducing their size and thus buoyancy.
 
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Steve Shannon said:
For latex balloons it is. There are redundant systems that cause their failure. They pop if the pressure differential stretches them too much and if not, the latex fails because sunlight weakens it.
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Wow, the only known 'perfect' process in the world known to man.
 
jderimig said:
Causing it to float over a lake at 40,000 ft?
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Note also that they are continuously transmitting weather and location data on known frequencies. For it to become an unknown flying object, you’d need the balloon not to break and the transmitter to stop working. North of those are extremely unlikely. The combo would be vanishingly rare.

Given that the person passing the theory has literally defended himself in court by saying that no reasonable person would believe him, I’m not inclined to start now.
 
boatgeek said:
Note also that they are continuously transmitting weather and location data on known frequencies. For it to become an unknown flying object, you’d need the balloon not to break and the transmitter to stop working. North of those are extremely unlikely. The combo would be vanishingly rare.

Given that the person passing the theory has literally defended himself in court by saying that no reasonable person would believe him, I’m not inclined to start now.
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I didn't know they had infinite mah batteries aboard.
 
jderimig said:
I didn't know they had infinite mah batteries aboard.
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OK, so let's take a look at, you know, actual weather balloons from the NWS. The balloons start at 6' diameter, expand to about 20' diameter, and carry a payload that's a slightly scaled-up half-gallon milk container. If you did an ounce of research instead of just flinging snark from afar like a capuchin monkey, you'd know that. For more details, see here, with a video here. I've clipped out this picture from the video--the radiosonde is the white object behind the person working.

1676393986021.png

So that's what a NWS weather balloon looks like. What are the descriptions of the other objects shot down?
Lake Huron, February 12: Octagonal with strings hanging off [Verdict: Nope! Not a weather balloon!]
Canadian Yukon, February 11: Small metallic balloon with a cylindrical payload [Verdict: Nope! NWS balloons are latex and have rectangular payloads]
Alaska, February 10: The size of a small car. [Verdict: Nope! Unless you're putting clowns in the car]

Is that enough for you to discount Tucker's reporting?

PS: According to the NWS link above, there are about 75,000 weather balloons launched per year, and about 20% are returned. Of course, you could have figured that out in about 10 seconds of Googling instead of "Just asking questions."
 
boatgeek said:
While a parachute ejection charge is technically an explosive, saying that an aircraft with an ejection charge was "carrying explosives" is asking your audience to make a leap of logic that the balloon was armed with bombs. That kind of fearmongering isn't helpful.
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but it makes for good $$$ and sound bites..

(and I'm sure it'll benefit someone in 2024..)
 
Sooner Boomer said:
I *seriously* doubt any of these have been legitimate weather balloons.

I have some experience in this area. OK, it was 20+ years ago, but little has changed.
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I read somewhere that weather balloons rarely if ever venture more than about 125 miles from launch. In your experience, is that the case?
 
Bravo52 said:
I read somewhere that weather balloons rarely if ever venture more than about 125 miles from launch. In your experience, is that the case?
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Sounds about right. Even if a balloon made it up into 200mph jet stream, it wouldn't be there very long.
 
Dotini said:
Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors”
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Nope...creative writing on the part of someone. First, F-35 pilots wouldn't talk to the media about this. Second, it was discounted by the other "pilot".... there is only one or two logical answers to this report... first, it's total fabricated 💩 (most likely) or misunderstood and reported incorrectly on information provided by NEREPs.
 
Bravo52 said:
Nope...creative writing on the part of someone. First, F-35 pilots wouldn't talk to the media about this. Second, it was discounted by the other "pilot".... there is only one or two logical answers to this report... first, it's total fabricated 💩 (most likely) or misunderstood and reported incorrectly on information provided by NEREPs.
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NEREP?
 
Just came across a paper explaining how a variable drag parachute can be used to control a balloon's descent path. Maybe someone out there wants to take a look and see if it can apply to model rocketry. NASA funded and all.
 
CalebJ said:
NEREP?
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Non Essential Rear Echelon Personnel...

One thing to consider... information about the recent balloon over Lake Huron might be due to the military not wishing to provoke others to launch "garbage bag" balloons to try and see if they can get it shot down by an F-16 (two shots) and a $600K missile. I'm sure we don't want this to become some sort of Frat party drinking game...
 
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Here is some information on weather balloons and radiosondes, including one of the balloon receivers set up in Melbourne, Australia. Interested citizens can build their own receivers and connect through the internet to the central server tracking the balloons. The callsign is ROXSONDE1, and you can see it on the tracking app at this link:

https://tracker.sondehub.org/?sonde...&mc=-33.11352,162.16605&f=RS_S1321184&q=rs_s*
Balloon information stays on the app for two days.

The receiver is basically a Raspberry Pi with a software defined radio dongle, and a 403MHz ¼ wave ground plane antenna on the roof. There is also a 403MHz filter and LNA in the antenna run. It uses radiosonde_auto_rx software developed by Mark Jessop from AREG in Adelaide:

https://github.com/projecthorus/radiosonde_auto_rx

Launches happen at 10:15 and 22:15 (AEDT currently) daily from Melbourne airport. They usually appear on the tracker between 5 and 10 minutes after launch.
 
jderimig said:
What if they don't? Like a slight leak that keeps them neutrally buoyant at some altitude. Is the balloon popping an 8+ sigma near zero defect process?
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Are you really expecting an 8sigma process? That would equate to somewhere around one "failure" in around 8x10^14. Even my PC has trouble with rounding errors in such a small number. Even if we take it back another 1.5sigma, as per normally dealing with real-world phenomena, the number is still only one failure in 1x10^10. Seems like a bit of a stretch for the weather balloon situation.

FYI, there are many real-world situations where these numbers are actually met. I have a communications link that was tested to better than one error in 6x10^14 (we gave up in the end, no point in further testing). I am also willing to bet there are other almost perfect processes, like for instance "all model rockets launched from Earth will come back to Earth", although I think this has only been tested around 70-80million times, so far.
 

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