A high-altitude Chinese balloon sailing across the U.S. & reports second flying over Latin America
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Source: CNN
A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon sailing across the U.S. and reports of a second flying over Latin America on Friday drew severe accusations from the Pentagon that China was spying on sensitive military sites despite Beijing's firm denials.
In the wake of the balloons being spotted, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly cancelled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions.
Aside from the government response, fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the balloon in the sky as it headed southeast over Kansas and Missouri at 18,300 metres.
It was spotted earlier over Montana, which is home to one of America's three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, defence officials said.
Later Friday, the Pentagon acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America.
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-spy-balloon-1.6735770
PLEASE READ THE 5TH PARAGRAPH ABOVE. ....PLEASE HIT THE LINK ABOVE....
You can't make this up............CAN YOU?
= new reply since forum marked as read
(Jacob Ennis)
(using this as a placeholder post 
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Weather balloon with a sondes -
I had noted in an earlier thread that this is thing is probably somewhere in size between the "#1" (hot air balloon) and the "#2" (Red Bull test jump balloon).
NASA funded a research project by AZ State to launch and test what they dub "CubeSounders" in a novel way to measure and collect atmospheric conditions at high altitudes (and apparently transmit that info to CubeSats) and anything going up that high needs to be that large in general. AND in that research project's case, they used balloons by this company - World View.
This is how "World View" describes themselves (and note that I discovered that Mark Kelly was a co-founder but I expect not active with them anymore) -
Since 2014, World View has led the way in remote sensing and Earth observation from the stratosphere, completing scores of successful flights for a variety of scientific, commercial and government enterprises. Our proprietary stratospheric balloon flight technology delivers better insights with far lower costs and lead times than satellites and other traditional aerial sources.
Focused on the future
World View's remote-controlled Stratollites fly five times closer to Earth than satellites, capturing high-resolution imagery with much greater detail. And since they can persistently hover over a target area for months, they provide a clearer picture of changes on the ground than satellites that only fly over a target area at the same time every day.
Our Stratollites operate at altitudes of up to 95,000 ft. (~29 km) for days, weeks and months on end. They offer 250W of power and a payload capacity of 50kg (with heavier capacities available soon.) They combine the benefits of geostationary satellites, LEO satellites, and high-altitude drones – offering the ideal mix of resolution, accuracy, and persistent viewing of key targets. All at a fraction of the cost.
Persistence and Resolution
Our stratospheric technology allows World View to transit the stratosphere with sensors that loiter over large areas of interest and provide persistent observation and data collection for a wide variety of applications, without the limitations of satellite orbit paths or short duration flight vehicles.
They show an example of image comparison -
"TRADITIONAL"
"STRATOLLITE"
So a "low cost" way to get more detailed imagery than would happen with a highly sophisticated/high-cost military satellite or even a drone. This particular thing actually seems like a possibility in this case given that China often copies tech from us and others (and they make many of the components going into stuff like this). In this company's case, the "payload" can be designed to disconnect from the balloon and land (using a parachute) somewhere for retrieval.
(World View had a "narrated" longer version of the above video playable on their website but it's not on their YouTube channel, and it gets a bit chilling to say the least)
They also made the balloons for those high-altitude jumps which are shown in the second image in this post.
(again sorry for the rambling
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is it nuclear powered? It is maneuverable, so it is powered. What's the power source? Seems like conventional fuel would have run out some time ago. 
