The Owner Of One Of Those Other Balloons We Shot Down May Have Just Stepped Forward
This is unbelievably believable…
Remember the movie, “Men In Black” when Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) is recruiting Agent Edwards (Will Smith) and they’re sitting on a bench in New York City and Smith says that people can handle the existence of aliens on earth? Remember what Agent Kay says?
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
Well, here we are many years later proving that movie line true. How? Well, people lost their collective s#it when a Chinese balloon flew over the nation a few weeks ago. Some people even suggested that they’d be able to shoot it down themselves with their guns. (Nothing says, “Murica” more than that, I tell ya….)
After that big white balloon was shot down everyone panicked just like Agent Kay predicted.
What did we do? We looked up and if we saw anything that could possibly resemble a balloon we shot it down.
Not just once. The US Military took out three other balloons one each over Alaska, Canada and Michigan. I read they used Sidewinder Missiles to take ’em out.
Days since those were blasted from the heavens, it’s unclear that we have even recovered those balloons’ remains.
It’s even unclear what the hell they were… Until now…
Allow me to introduce The “Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade”.
It’s a club for balloon hobbyists. The name is a reference to a scene in the movie “Up”, where the old man gives the kid a merit badge that’s really a bottlecap. (Here’s the scene.)
The group launches small balloons with trackers on them, just so they can track them as they float around the world. And they’re very basic. They usually cost between $12 and $180.
The $12 versions are basic Mylar balloons, like the kind you’d buy at a party store. Dozens are up there at any given time, and they sometimes circle the Earth several times before they come down. They weigh less than six pounds, so they’re allowed by the FAA.
The Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says they lost contact with one of their balloons on February 10th near Alaska. That’s also when the military used a Sidewinder missile to shoot something down in the same area.
The Balloon Brigade’s balloon was floating at around 39,000 feet, which is also about right. So the circumstantial evidence adds up, but the government hasn’t confirmed anything yet.
So, to review: We used a weapon that costs almost $400,000 to shoot down a $50 hobby balloon.
By the way, another one of these hobby balloons is set to enter U.S. airspace TODAY. So stayed tuned. There’s also a chance it could pass over Mexico.