We just cut this section out of our weekly, members-only Right Angle:Backstage show. Two reasons: first, to show you how much fun non-members are missing, and second, because balloons.
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45 replies on “Three Idiots Taking Foolishness About Balloons”
Forgive the correction, Bill. The 6 killed in the continental US during WWII were civilians, one adult and five children in Oregon. . .on a picnic that found the Fu-Go balloon after it came down.
Thirty some years later my mom still loves to tell the story about how I did this very same balloon experiment when I was a kid.
Somehow I arrived at it independently, never having heard about it anywhere. I even used a dry-cleaning bag.
Oh boy, it seems the Biden regime is quite inept, look at this:
“To be fair, Biden is providing powerful deterrence for any high school science clubs that might try to invade America….,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/17/gop-mocks-biden-for-shooting-down-possible-12-hobby-balloon/
Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down By USAFhttps://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf
This balloon thing is a great demonstration of the Left’s all or nothing attitude when it comes to nearly everything. What Greg Gutfeld calls “the prison of two extremes”.
I.E. …
Etc. I could write pages of examples but you get the idea I’m sure.
Nuance and scope are not things the Left is adept at applying. Maybe that’s why they can’t meme.
The danger of having people who think that way in positions of leadership in a very complex and dynamic world is obvious. That kind of thinking paralyzes the choice of anything between two extremes. Which means disaster no matter which extreme is selected.
This is easy to see when as Conservatives we view the Left in the hard light of day. It’s not so easy to see when we’re doing the same disastrous thing ourselves.
Which is also why we Conservatives should be very wary of anything that smacks of an extreme ourselves. Extreme orientation leaves only two choices; one extreme or the other. There’s a centerline on the dial between those two extremes and anything that moves the needle in our direction is a win. Some wins are bigger than others, some are smaller. Not taking a win as a win just helps our enemies move the needle to their preferred extreme.
Sorry…
Will Smith Men in Black Neuralyzer Mind Wipe Source Clip – YouTube
Would Skyhook really need elastic? My gut says inertia and atmospheric drag would be sufficient.
All rope has a quite a bit of stretch in it. That’s why rock and mountain climbers don’t get their spine snapped like a pencil when they fall and their rope and harness saves them from plummeting to their death. Depending on the length of fall and thus the length of rope being stretched you can get a pretty good bounce when the rope stops you.
Which BTW is scary as hell. As a matter of fact now that you’ve reminded me of it, fast-roping, climbing, rappelling, SPIE rigging and just about every other kind of rope work is scary as hell. Major adrenalin jag. Once you learn to trust your gear it’s a lot of fun too but … Can you really ever trust your life to a rope and some metal fittings?
On longer rappelling drops while braking hard you can feel the rope stretching too. It’s kind of a weird sensation to get used to. If you use that stretch just right you can land feather-light and very quietly.
Climbing ropes are rated by falls. Like one fall, two falls, etc. That’s how many times you can fall, have the rope catch you and the rope isn’t all stretched out to the breaking point … yet. You hope. You hope someone else didn’t fall the last rated fall on the rope you’re using and put it back in service. Once a rope has reached its fall limit it should be destroyed.
You can cut it to lengths and use it for things like tying tarps over loads. It can still be used but a human life should never be trusted to it again once it’s been stretched to the maximum, however that stretch occurs.
The rope for this skyhook gizmo would be ruined after one use. Even then I’d imagine there’s some sort of spring loaded buffer on the aircraft end to prevent jerks, which would potentially cause snapped ropes. That would be bad halfway between the ground and the aircraft.
Obviously they can’t use steel cable, which does not stretch. That would be way too heavy to lug around and too heavy to allow a small-ish balloon to get aloft.
The lift is actually quite gentle and initially mostly vertical. The line is long and the aircraft intercepts it at 90 degrees to the direction of travel.
Here’s another take on it:
https://youtu.be/Zcxo3lUzH-g
The aircraft just drops a long rope and orbits around the pickup point while the payload is hooked on. Then the aircraft slowly climbs while continuing to orbit. And you thought “turns around a point” was just a silly thing you had to do for your private pilot checkride…
The advantage is you don’t need a balloon or any special “snagging” gear on the aircraft.
The dangerous part of these things is if something lets loose when you’re high enough to die from falling but not high enough to open a chute.
Reverse skydiving only at billwhittle.com.
I attended a wedding where they did the balloon launch thing with paper bags and votive candles. They launched them. They were beautiful all floating away in the air. All I could think of was all these balloons coming down somewhere and starting a forest fire.
I was once drinking with some old guys at a party who invented the skyhook thing. Either that or they were the best liars I ever met. But they went into great detail about the technical parts of it. I know one of their grandsons and he had been telling me this story for some time. It was first invented for remote mail pickup. The human version was made popular in one of the early James Bond movies.
I personally believe that balloon was just one of the assets we left behind for them in Afghanistan. They were simply returning it. Thumb in the eye.
“Too close for missiles, I’m switching to buckshot”
Bryan Suits was talking about why they use the AIM-9X on these balloons. They’ve tried shooting them with cannons in the past. The problem is the latex is stretched out at 60 to 100 thousand feet. As the balloon descends, the bullet holes shrink quite a bit and the thing just lingers down at commercial air altitudes.
Could be time for some new ordnance. Bird shot?
We have an antipersonnel missile that sprouts blades and shreds human targets in order to limit the collateral damage that would otherwise occur with explosive warheads. That would seem to me to be highly appropriate if adapted to anti-balloon warfare.
Lifting the guy from the ground: Fulton recovery system.
May 3, 1966: Fulton Recovery System, Also Passed an Important Milestone when the First Human Ground-to-Air Recoveries > Air Force Test Center > News (af.mil)
Was used to pull a prisoner out of a denied area in “The Green Berets” John Wayne movie. Another article said it was used in the James Bond movie Thunderball.
Historical retrospective: The Fulton Extraction System | SOFREP
Web search for Fulton Recovery System yields lots of nifty links.
Bill, 6 civilians were killed by Japenese balloons too-4 kids and 2 adults.
nelson
I seem to remember when Bill was talking about this in the Stratosphere Lounge, that it ended with a car driving down the highway with a flaming balloon caught on its antenna. A mental image I’ll take to my grave. 🙂
I did not think of this in the Backstage, and now it won’t let me alone until I post it.
As to the lawyer fighting for the case of melted plastic falling on your car:
“Did you have melted plastic falling on your car? We fight for you, at Dewey, Cheatam, and Howe!”
Ill let myself out now.
Man I loved Car Talk Puzzlers. Only thing good on NPR ever.
Aren’t we all idiots for letting “them” distract us with this embarrassingly stupid meme? What can balloons tell us that insanely high resolution satellites can’t? And it’s so crazy that there is more attention paid to this than the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. The military response is higher, I know that. Whatever is being hidden by the “media masters” must be important for them to break out the balloons of death.
BTW, RIP Herbie, the car-shaped UFO.
Balloons can hover for a long time if they can move under their own power, which apparently the first one did. Hovering allows more detail.
So, …. you’re taking this seriously?
Let’s go all in. The next headline is that Biden proposes a new branch of the military —– BALLOON FORCE.
Seriously for actual spy balloons. The Chinese are treating the first one seriously. And any purposeful incursion should be taken seriously lest it be taken as weakness. But Biden already has that after Afghanistan. Now all this stuff is “See? Were taking this seriously!” …. Locking the barn door after the horse got out. Take it that seriously, and trumpeting it for all UFOs? No.
Is it a distraction from all of Biden’s flaws?
Is the Pope Catholic, and do bears poop in the woods?
I take it seriously. At least one large lighter-than-air aircraft clearly equipped with electronic surveillance gear managed to traverse the entire United States of America unmolested.
A balloon like that is a way, way cheaper and stealthier means to loft more payload than sending it into orbit on a rocket. We monitor orbital and suborbital launches over the entire surface of the Earth. Balloon launches not at all, so yeah, it’s serious …
If the Americans are stupid enough to allow it to fly over their country it makes a very effective poor man’s spy satellite. It’s probably uploading its data to a satellite or satellite constellation already in orbit. It might even be using one of ours or Europe’s communication satellites to get that information back to its country of origin.
The Israelis use balloons for surveillance and the Palestinians use them for weapons all the time. Israel just put a new balloon deployed radar into service last year. It allows them to ‘look down’ with their radar to detect things like Palestinian rocket and balloon launches earlier to gain a time advantage for interception.
As for this being a distraction … I can’t speak for everyone else but I’m not easily distracted. The same cannot be said for a preponderance of American news media. That segment of the media will seize upon a distraction when the opportunity presents itself but that tactic has lost much of its influence now that ‘news’ can be garnered from so many different sources.
I don’t see any way to change that except to point people towards actual news as it occurs. If someone is a die hard Main Stream Media fan feeding their own confirmation bias they’re being herded anyway.
So yes, I take this real threat seriously. Just because the media is using it for a ‘distraction’ doesn’t negate the nature of the threat. In fact, that very media is unwittingly exposing the incompetent and careless nature of the Potato Joe cabal now running this country.
Maxar employee chiming in here. Their satellite image capabilities are way behind ours. A balloon loitering at 60,000 feet gets better pictures than what they have in LEO.
Yes, I am aware of the state of their satellite systems.
That’s why I said they very well may have used encrypted communications bounced off our own communications satellite constellations. Better satellites, more reliable communications. It wouldn’t be at all difficult for that thing to ‘phone home’ via AT&T to send data. A SATPhone with data encryption is all it would take to do that.
One of my first thoughts was now that they know we are going to shoot them down, what is to keep them from having a payload that is actually dangerous? Not sure what the payload capacity is, but what if it was that weight of Anthrax or something like it?
Lot’s of low tech ways to be very dangerous.
The payload capacity is one sheep, one goat and, a chicken.
That’s a concern but only if we’re at war with China. Dropping a deadly payload like anthrax on the U.S. population is a clear and unequivocal act of war. It would be impossible for them to hide that like they did the origin of the COVID virus.
I agree that would be an act of war, now I ask you: What would Joe’s puppet masters actually do in that case?
Would they even admit to the source of the deaths?
Didn’t the Chair of the JCOS under Trump say he would get on the phone with his Chinese counterpart to warn him if Trump wanted to take military action of any kind against China, I think it was wrt Taiwan.
Would our feckless and fearful elected officials (I refuse to call them leaders) channel their inner Stalin and just right off a few thousand deaths as a statistical blip?
Not trying to get tin-foil hatty or anything, but short of a missile attack or EMP, I am not sure that we would even issue a strongly worded letter through the UN.
Good points all and if it were solely a matter of a Federal response it would not surprise me one bit if the Biden Crime Cabal tried to just sweep it under the proverbial rug.
It looks like they’re trying to do exactly that concerning a train accident and toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio. Probably in order to cover up the inept incompetence of Lil’ Petey Buttgrudge. I don’t think they’re having much success and it’s obviously a fact that Lil’ Petey is as useless as mammary glands on a male porcine.
Still, that situation in East Palestine gives you a pretty good model for what would happen in the scenario you posit.
I said dropping anthrax from a balloon would be an act of war. I didn’t say that it would trigger a war with China or any kinetic response from Potatohead Joe and his Pudding Cup Posse.
I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about a lot because that would be straight murder without any clear cause. Local media and law enforcement would pick up on it and raise a huge stink. Conservative media around the globe would add much to that stink. Even while Potted Plant Biden tried to nap through the noise — Doing something like that would cause a significant negative backlash on China. And Joe isn’t going to be in office forever …
I can’t think of any reason why China would want to do something like that unless we were at war already. They’d just be ruining their cozy relationship with the Bleary-Eyed Hair Sniffing Stair Tripper to no advantage.
Even putting something toxic in the balloon or payload to discourage us from shooting it down would be taking a huge gamble. What goes up must come down and there’s no telling where such a balloon will come down eventually if we don’t shoot it down. It could go completely around the world and land in China.
You’re right that Mark Milley and his ilk need to go. If I had my ‘druthers I’d retire them all. In front of a thick wall each tied to a post with black bags over their heads. This is the only sort of retirement I feel is suitable for traitors. Fortunately for them and sadly for me, I’m not in charge of such things.
I’m way more, by a factor of infinity, concerned about Tik-Tok and other means by which the Chicoms are dumbing down our populace and destroying Western Civilization
I’m concerned about that kind of thing too. One does not exclude the other. We weren’t talking about Tiktok, we were talking about balloon bourne spying and that’s pretty serious too.
Tiktok is a threat to the stupid. You can’t fix stupid.
You can shoot down a spy device violating our sovereign airspace. That’s no different than if they had flown a manned aircraft of any kind over our military installations. It doesn’t matter if it’s a balloon or a high altitude, high speed aircraft. Same result.
It’s not even solely a matter of what intelligence they might be gathering via spy aircraft, though that’s a factor too. It’s also a matter of not just letting them do it and get away with it. Which is something we should never do.
Tiktok has been banned on all Federal issued devices. Many states (22 at last count) also have a ban on installing that on their devices. It is also banned on issued devices aboard military installations, no exceptions. Some military installations even block the Tiktok app at their firewalls so it can’t be used locally over their wireless and wired networks even on private devices. (Which still does not preclude using Tiktok on cellular data networks but it makes it harder, a little bit.) More needs to be done but this is a good start, National Security -wise.
If we ban Tiktok from military installations I can see no reason why we should not negate an even more obvious direct threat from spy aircraft. That balloon flew over a lot of military installations all of which ban Tiktok.
Even banning Tiktok in the U.S. does little. The internet is global and it’s not hard to download and install an app from outside the country. All the U.S. can do is outlaw it so that it isn’t available on Google and Apple app stores. That doesn’t stop Tiktok.
The day after they do that there will be scads of videos on YouTube telling people how to get and install Tiktok.
Whereas shooting down spy aircraft in our airspace is something that can be done.
Firewalling Tiktok across the entire nation, if that can even be done and I’m not so sure it’s possible, doesn’t send quite the same emphatic message as an AIM-9x-2 Sidewinder missile.
How do you light the candles AFTER you tape them to the bottom of the bag? I mean, if we were doing this. Which we’re not.
How can we do it? Which we are not?
Carefully.😏
With either a lighter or a match. I recommend avoiding a large propane torch.
I was thinking flame thrower.
“Well that was impressive! But it didn’t go very far.”😏
(Preceeded by the infamous statement: “Hold my beer.”)
First you inflate whatever you’re using for an air bag by using a blow dryer on high heat It will stand up on it’s own, being now full of air considerably warmer than the ambient. Then you can light the candles. Carefully.
Also rather than using tape you can heat weld the top and trim and weld the sides. (I.E. the unavoidable folds where the bag attaches to the candle support frame.) This allows you to trim off parts of the air bag that will not contribute to lift and reduce weight. You do this by sandwiching the parts you want to weld between an insulator, like two pieces of wood, then applying heat from a lighter to melt the parts together until the plastic reaches the wood. With a little practice you can make some very nice welded seams this way.
I was thinking that one could simply suspend the contraption by the lifting the top-center of the balloon, and lighting the center-most candle. Wait until it sufficiently heats the air in the balloon so it stands on its own, then light the remaining candles. This requires fewer auxiliary tools in exchange for some additional assembly/launch time.
However, I assumed (like Harry) this short thread was launched as satire instead of serious inquiry. My assumption may have been incorrect.
I guess I did it the hard way. A friend and I ordered a “12 foot hot air balloon” out of the back of Popular Science. The thing was sheets of tissue paper which you glued together.
His dad was ex-Navy and a lot like Bill. He was reading the instructions and his eyes went wide as he said out loud “if the balloon catches fire, let it go. IT WILL RISE AND BE CONSUMED IN THE AIRI!!”
This guy was a 45 year old kid, and we knew he wanted to see that happen as much as we did.
1981. What a time to be a kid.
Yup. In 1981, it was good to be 13 years old and looking for things to blow up and shoot at without the supervision of helicopter parents.
The inquiry was made, satirically or not, and I simply answered the question. In retrospect there seems to be a lot of non-satirical interest. I don’t know why.
I’ve done this hot air balloon thing before and I was just explaining how I did it. My boys used to love doing stuff like this with me.
We built some really gargantuan kites too. Then shot at them with spud guns.
The balloons are great fun on a still, heavy summer evening.
My wife would come outside, see that we were doing a ‘science’ thing then shake her head and go back inside to continue her crocheting.
Unless something went “BOOM!”. Then she’d come back outside again and complain we’d made her drop a stitch. Or whatever is the equivalent of a stitch when it comes to crochet. I can’t remember what those are called if it’s not ‘stitch’.
🙂
My wife also does the crochet thing. I cannot fathom why it is so interesting; it seems mind-numbingly tedious to me. I think your “dropped stitch” terminology is correct, since I’ve heard her say the same thing from time-to-time.
Right Angle Balloon 😀
Scott is the “Me” of Right Angle.
Me too. I like hearing what Bill and Steve have to say with their conservative perspectives but I love how Scott tempers things with reasonable and alternate views. I don’t always agree with Scott but his views are always welcome.
Ok, this looks like fun.
Yeah, I like the idea of riddling it with holes and let it fall slowly to help persevere it for study.
Even though I watched this and commented on this in the Backstage episode available to members only, I laughed at parts of this.
Love it.