Depending on who’s releasing it and how old the equipment is, yes, they can be fairly large in instrumentation.

I honestly think that people are making WAY too much over this and panicking too much, thinking it’s a spy balloon. Next steps will be video from the 2012 version of Red Dawn showing up on Fox News and…

I’m leaning toward this being an underinflated weather balloon.

I say this because every single day, at noon and midnight, London time, weather balloons are released AROUND THE WORLD that look JUST like this, with devices attached to track wind currents. The balloons are designed to pop at a certain height and the…

“Holy shit! That ain’t no weather balloon! That there is a spy balloon! China’s using it to spy on us! Let’s shoot that sucker down so they can’t spy on us no more!”

I believe the Chinese have excellent imaging reconnaissance satellites already, on par with the U.S. (~10 cm?), such that there would be diminishing returns on any increase in resolution, especially when you can’t even control where the camera on a balloon goes. What point is there to get a really clear image of a…

Watching everyone clutching their pearls and acting as if the US does not spy on China in any way at all.

This all makes sense. Getting out and doing nature walks and, later, changing homes to one where my work from home bedroom/office has multiple windows and vastly more sunlight made a huge difference in my depression.

The great news here is that catching up on Vitamin D isn’t a terribly expensive or difficult…

None... and that is the worst part. This was clearly a weather balloon. 

In a world where civilian satellites the size of a shoebox can see how much oil is sitting in a bunker, what kind of spy balloon would be bright white, visible from the ground with the naked eye, and the size of three school buses? You guys just shot down a weather balloon.

LOL. They used a premier fighter jet to knock out the slowest moving object in the sky.

You starting to get the feeling that class actions are ways for the lawyers to get rich?  

In my experience. . .

Irrelevant. We either respect international law or we don’t. And international law and US law says these two regions are part of China. Much can be said about the UN and how it is controlled by different members to their own ends. But that’s not what we’re discussing here.  

Neither one of these are recognized as sovereign states by the UN. 

Totally. Making babies is free. Sounds like a smart way to save $27 to me.

Children are easily created by unskilled labor.

“You can keep her - we’ll make another one.”

Babies never have cash on them.

put them in cages and check them as freight.

Hard to blame them, little kids on planes....

The response I came here for.