• darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    It wasn’t a hobbyist balloon to my knowledge. It was an expensive professional one. Unless the hobbyist was a millionaire it was likely launched by a University or their national weather service and they’d likely counted on recovering and re-using it but it was blown off course, this happens to US research balloons too from time to time so they’re buying new ones semi-regularly… They did later shoot down a hobbyist balloon sent up by an American group but that was a later incident.

    • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Perhaps I got the stories mixed up. In any case, we know it wasn’t a “spy” balloon so continuing to refer to it as such is disingenuous and reveals that the author’s arguments are not being made in good faith.