Blimps To Help Protect Washington DC From Air Attack 270
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Reuters reports that a pair of bulbous, helium-filled 'aerostats', each 243 feet long, will be moored to the ground and fly as high as 10,000 feet, as part of a high-tech shield designed to protect the Washington D.C. area from an air attack like the one that took place on September 11, 2001. One of the aerostats carries a powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles. The other carries a radar used for targeting. Operating for up to 30 days at a time, JLENS is meant to give the military more time to detect and react to threats (PDF), including cruise missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, compared with ground-based radar and is also designed to defend against tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving vehicles that could be used for attacks, including boats, cars and trucks. 'We're trying to determine how the surveillance radar information from the JLENS platforms can be integrated with existing systems in the National Capital Region,' says Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Washington is currently guarded by an air-defense system that includes Federal Aviation Administration radars and Department of Homeland Security helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on alert at Reagan National Airport to intercept slow, low-flying aircraft."
Scary Blimps (Score:5, Interesting)
The designers should give the blimps a dark steampunk look so that visitors to DC can pretend like they are in a euro-WWII-alternate-timeline story.
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Haha thought the same thing. But is the white and shiny word of Mirror's Edge that much less bad because it doesn't look evil?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:well the bad news is (Score:5, Insightful)
Judge Dredd is a real thing, but he's a semi-autonomous flying robot and he has a lot less respect for due process than the fictional character...
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Re:well the bad news is (Score:5, Informative)
First off, 1984 started off as a book, so it'd really be a book-turned-reality, but it's not even that.
The scary part of 1984 isn't the surveillance. That's just the most visible aspect that everyone talks about. The villain of the story is the government that fears its people so much that it resorts to mind control as a means of keeping peace. Mind control is a tricky thing, though, so extreme scarcity and enforced conformity are used to rein in any dissent. Surveillance is just a tool the government uses to look for that dissent.
The book hints at the possibility that the world is actually not at war, but the ongoing conflicts are actually staged to justify the artificial scarcity. Even Goldstein's underground rebellion may be a hoax perpetrated by the government to expose any rebellious tendencies. Those that are caught are tortured to break their minds, stripping away conscious thought and logic until assertions can be made without resistance. That's when the victim knows that there really is no viable escape, no higher purpose, and not even any nobility in life or death.
Every title in 1984 is ironic. The Ministry of Plenty restricts supplies, the Ministry of Love tortures, the Ministry of Peace plans the wars, the Ministry of Truth distributes lies... and Big Brother is not a loving familial support, but rather an oppressive embodiment of an anti-social Socialist government.
The fully-converted mindless drones of Ingsoc merely survive, not because they are being watched by Big Brother, but because there is no other choice. The constant surveillance is just a symbol of the government's constant presence. Whether that constant presence is a good or bad thing is a separate issue, which Orwell later recognized openly as peaceful post-WWII societal changes eased his wartime fears.
Re:well the bad news is (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'm inclined to agree, but for the sake of literary analysis, I'll use the term the author used. Orwell classifies Ingsoc as socialism, because socialism (as he saw it) was something he feared. Bearing in mind that he wrote in the 1940s, socialism (of the fascist Nazi ("National Socialist") kind) was very different from any modern socialist government.
The simplistic point of socialism is to support the population through well-managed programs. Orwell's perversion of the concept is a government whose well-managed programs intentionally oppress the people. The tactics used to accomplish the oppression were indeed fascist.
Re:well the bad news is (Score:4, Informative)
Orwell was a socialist:
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." -- George Orwell [wikipedia.org]
Re:well the bad news is (Score:4, Informative)
Mod Parent up. The man writing under the pen name of George Orwell was a socialist. He was also a freedom kind of guy and today would be classified among europe's mainstream parties that believe in social democracy.
The book Animal Farm is a analogy to what he experienced working with Stalin's agents in the Spanish Revolution. He was cautioning that Stalin's brand of communism wasn't socialism, it was totalitarianism dressed of as socialism. His experience in Spain convinced him that Stalin and his form of communism was pure evil and he wrote two very famous books (under the pen name George Orwell) to warn the world about what Stalin was and where he would lead us. He also spent quite a bit of time trying to implement social democracy in England under his real name.
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Giant ominous blimps overseeing the population below, drones, the "See Something; Say Something" videos everywhere, including Walmart checkouts and the "See Something; Say Something" mantra being repeated at subways and train stations. TSA VIPR teams spreading out across the country to do traffic stops, inspect you in line at the train station and football events. Pre-emptive cyber-warfare. Nope, this isn't Orwellian at all. Nope.
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No need to wage a war anymore. Anybody who opposes the measures are enemies of the fatherland. The fear itself has become the enemy - the subconscious and the maintenance of the earthly bodies is controlled by mega corporations. It's a handy plan - everybody becomes a drone.
Systems integration (Score:4, Insightful)
They state as fact the blimps will be deployed, but they're still "trying to determine" how they can be integrated into the air defense system? Isn't that kinda backwards?
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Not if you think about government spending. First spend the money, then see if you can do something useful with it.
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I work in government. Don't spend money you've been allocated and not only will your budget be cut even harder next year, but you'll also be criticized for "sitting on" the money. It's totally fucked up. Once your budget is set (playing a game of "I want a pony" to receive a small dog) it's better to overspend than to save. My department was almost set on a plan to blow cash on some very expensive software packages that we knew would be lightly used to "bleed off" some budget, but then we got the order to g
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Not if you think about government spending. First spend the money, then see if you can do something useful with it.
Why is this "troll?" Anyone else just read about rape-i-scan machines?
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It's call panopticon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon [wikipedia.org], basically turning American cities into open air prison monitored 24/7/365 as the rich and greedy wind the screws on the rest of the population. Air defence is a laughable excuse, unless Canada and Mexico have become real threats and all of a sudden the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have become undefendable. Of course air defence is the easy excuse and, national security to hide what is actually installed and then of course the excuses to start usi
You're joking, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the 9/11 attacks were all about not having radar visibility of the aircraft, uh huh. Sure.
They were perfectly visible by radar.
So this is a hidden agenda (technology that will not be mentioned by them) or a complete BS example of making Americans feel comfortable, like nothing will ever happen again because they're being watched out for.
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Stop thinking about conspiracies, the answer is looking you in the face.
This is a way to spend money on defense and defense contractors. That is really it. No conspiracy or secret motive, just another move to hand our tax dollars to someone's buddies.
Re:You're joking, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, a conspiracy has to be something hidden, this is being done in public with everyone in full knowledge of the money being spent.
I wish you we were joking. (Score:2)
This is not at all about making Americans feel comfortable.
It's about keeping their voting bloc in line.
Now I wish I was joking.
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Speaking as a DC resident, this talks of defensive blimps is actually making me very uncomfortable. But if the threat is real then so be it.
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Wouldn't a hunting rifle be much cheaper and more practical?
I can hit a clay pigeon on a pole at 300 yards with one, I am sure a better marksmen could hit such a huge target from much further away.
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Wouldn't a hunting rifle be much cheaper and more practical?
I can hit a clay pigeon on a pole at 300 yards with one, I am sure a better marksmen could hit such a huge target from much further away.
I'll future-quote:
"Uh, that was planned for. We were uh, using, uh, the blimps to, you know, ummm, find the evil people that were trying to take them down to prevent them from spotting their allies. Yeah! That's what happened and the DoD documents will, I mean, DO say so!"
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They're not going to pop like a party balloon:
"Because the aerostats are not highly pressurized, bullets won’t burst them; they can actually remain buoyant for hours after suffering multiple punctures." (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-usas-raid-program-small-aerostats-big-surveillance-time-02779/)
If you google harder than I did, you'll find more information about aerostats.
However, if you'd like to be a worrier consider the following:
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Why does that change anything?
So they take a little longer to fall, not a problem for a nuisance maker. Even an advantage as it may allow him more time to leave undetected.
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.750 grains? That seems very light. .50 BMG which is 750 grains.
I think you mean
108 inches seems small compared to the size of a blimp.
I did not think about the altitude though. Still another ballon towing some sort of explosive then seems cheaper and easier than a laser.
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This aerostat says its altitude is 10,000 feet, but no caliber rifle right now will be able to shoot vertically more than 1,500 ft.
Limiting yourself to only shoulder-fired rifles, you're pretty much right.
However, when you take into consideration some of the larger caliber, mounted rifles, the picture changes - the Bofors 40mm rifle, for example, has an effective range of 40-60,000 feet, well beyond the flight ceiling of the target, er, balloon in question.
And yes, civilians can own a Bofors, provided they pass the same rigors as are required for other fully automatic weapons.
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You could get/build a non-automatic and just pay the tax for a destructive device.
A powerful laser would be a killer idea! (Score:2)
And please, please, please make the blimp look like a giant shark.
Maybe that's an acronym, something like the Sky High Anti Radar Killer?
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That is not what the cost has to be compared against.
It must be compared against the cost of the attack and the likelihood of such an attack. The last one kills your little idea.
So rather than... (Score:3)
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Re:So rather than... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, you're misunderstanding: The spending tons of money on useless counter-measures is big profits to the politically-connected seller who's just happened to provide appropriate amounts of graft to the government folks.
The goal isn't (and generally has never been) to fix the problem, the goal is to maximize profits.
Blimps, manned and unmanned (Score:5, Informative)
.
San Diego Union Tribune [utsandiego.com] article about an unmanned Army blimp brought down in Pa. woods
And another one, found by searching for military and blimps, also found in gizmag and wired, is a dedicated blimp site article [blimpinfo.com] about the army preparing and training for using a huge/mammoth spy blimp, an LEMV = US Army's massive Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle:
also http://www.gizmag.com/lemv-first-flight/22675/ [gizmag.com] ...
and http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/massive-spy-blimp [wired.com] : Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight
There wass also an auxilliary naval air field north of La Jolla in Del Mar that also was used for blimps: http://www.militarymuseum.org/NAAFDelMar.html [militarymuseum.org]
Re:Blimps, manned and unmanned (Score:4, Informative)
Soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, which has bumpy terrain and bad weather, have always wanted "eyes in the sky" that would give them a heads up on enemy attacks. The bad terrain stops the soldiers from seeing too far away because the bad guys hide in the hills. The bad weather is alternately freezing or too hot, so fixed wing aircraft such as the Predator crash and can't stay overhead constantly. A blimp could just sit there with their sensors spying away, and if you can make the tether long enough, the blimp would be outside the range of enemy fire.
Time for our elected officials to "man up." (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of elected officials thinking of themselves as a valuable commodity. They're just citizens. No better, no worse than the rest of us. They need to send a message to the "terrorists." This message should be something to the effect, "You can hurt me, kill me, do whatever you want, but know that there are plenty of other people in line to take my place."
I really do believe that the current breed of politician would make the founders of the U.S.A. sick.
Over the horizon radar (Score:2)
fly as high as 10,000 feet
powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles.
There's a simple aviation rule of thumb (aka its probably less than 10% inaccurate) that 10Kft = 100nm to the horizon.
So they're admitting its a OTH radar. That seems odd, why make a shitty lightweight OTH when you could make a really good one on the ground. In the air would be a good spot for a stereotypical skin painting surveillance radar, however.
I'm suspecting there's some specsmanship going on here were an infinite number of imperial to metric re-conversions and PR rounding up 20 times has somehow l
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So what if they could see the aircraft? The last time the air defence didn't work (whether or not it was on purpose), so how would these blimps help if the same things would still apply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#Air_defense_stand_down_theory [wikipedia.org]
FWIW I'd have thought the US air bases would be able to scramble jets for interception within minutes, so to me it's quite suspicious that the air defence couldn't take down at least one of the airliners but what do I know.
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Only two? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that London had many more than just two during World War II.
Although the intent of them was to provide obstructions to aircraft rather than trying to detect them.
Zeppelin (Score:5, Funny)
JLENS is an electro-optical/IR surveillance system (Score:4, Insightful)
Former imagery analyst and UAV contractor here.
While I'm not denying that these aerostats are capable of floating high resolution air-search radar, etc, their purpose over in the non-war combat zones of afghanistan and iraq where I lived for 2-3 years was to loft high resolution zoom optics with an EO/IR sensor payload in order to spot shooters and mortar teams within several miles of their ground stations. Essentially it was like having a full-time predator feed orbiting your base, which was really convenient for the aforementioned purposes.
On smaller bases you would have a guyed lattice tower with a camera ball on top, on larger ones, you got an aerostat. The ground station equipment used to view and transport the video feeds was similar/identical to those used for smaller UAV systems.
Again, it's possible these will be used for the stated purpose, but if they are, it'd be the first time I've seen it done. The most advanced surface to air missile systems do not use aerostats; take a look at the Russian S-300 (SA-10/20). It uses a ground-based air search radar and a ground-based target acquisition radar. Of course, this system is designed to be highly mobile, but the terrain around DC isnt so mountainous that a traditional early warning system wouldn't suffice. Even less so a target acquisition or illumination radar, as those two systems usually require LOS to the target. Unless terrorists have learned advanced terrain-following flight profiles and can manage to fly them in a fully fueled passenger aircraft (lol). The extreme precision radars that guide anti-mortar gun systems which can shoot a softball falling at terminal velocity out of the sky are still _ground based_
Believe me, I have every confidence that Washington has managed to find a new lightweight high res radar system to waste money on.
(hint) However, I also advise that it would eliminate a lot of the troublesome FAA and national-security related regulations barring UAV surveillance of the populace if this system is considered a ground-tethered conventional surveillance camera like the ones at wal-mart, rather than a high precision aerial sensor platform, y'know, like it actually is... (/hint)
Reality Check (Score:2)
So how can I check whether I'm in an alternative reality when I can't depend on dirigibles in the sky any more?
Fringe (Score:4, Insightful)
Just another air traffic obstacle for DCA airport (Score:5, Insightful)
I find this amusing because Reagan National Airport already has one of the most restrictive air traffic patterns in the country. I can see it now, take off to the North and then do a hard bank left to avoid the No Fly Zone and the Washington Monument, then a bank right to avoid the blimp. I can see commercial pilots now having to have simulator sessions to avoid tethered dirigible avoidance. Of course this means that airfare prices will increase by 50% to cover this training.
What they're building are barrage balloons which have been used since before WWII. While mildly effective, I seriously doubt that a well heeled terrorist organization will have their own air force or cruise missiles. Maybe a rogue nation, such as the PRK perhaps but then again I'd think they'd know well in advance of that kind of attack. DC is less than 36 square miles and if all of our strategic national assets are there, then we're in deep S**T. There's lots of bureaucrats of course and Congress and their staff, but could we do without them for awhile? Yeah, I know that's wishful thinking. Does anybody in DC honestly think these Rube Goldberg devices will actually do anything or just be a giant, taxpayer funded, deficit increasing waste of money? Obviously not. [wikipedia.org]
Balloons were sometimes more trouble than they were worth. In 1942 Canadian and American forces began joint operations to protect the sensitive locks and shipping channel at Sault Ste. Marie along their common border among the Great Lakes against possible air attack.[3] During severe storms in August and October 1942 some barrage balloons broke loose, and the trailing cables short-circuited power lines, causing serious disruption to mining and manufacturing. In particular, the metals production vital to the war effort was disrupted.
I'm stocking up on Jiffy Pop now and waiting for the first set of severe thunderstorms to dislodge them and then have the F16s scramble to shoot them down. Some of the debris will be flammable and will land on the South East of DC, causing severe panic and riots. I just can't wait.
As Patton said:
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.”
Even if they are fronted by balloons.
Blimps to Help Create Useless Jobs and Waste Money (Score:2)
^^^ FTFY
I call (Score:2)
Who bets a plane hits the tether within 24 hours? (Score:2)
Not new (Score:3)
These balloons are nothing new - they have them on the Texas coast and down the Mexican border, and they've been using them for decades to spot illegal flights coming out of Mexico. Look at any aeronautical chart for these areas and you'll see a circle with the warning "Unmarked balloon on cable up to 15,000 feet" or something similar (sorry, I don't have a Houston sectional to hand to check).
British Attache (Score:3)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, a giant ball of gas catching fire when fired upon and crashing into DC will sure help protect it.
You do realize that they tend to use Helium now-a-days, right? And helium is fire retardant.
I'd list a bunch of "Archer" quotes from one of my favorite episodes, but I'm too lazy to look them up.
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But what are they going to fill it w/?
Congress is still going forward w/ plans to close the Federal Helium Reserve:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577567102314948314.html [wsj.com]
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2012/12dec/helium1212.cfm [aapg.org]
and has intentionally been pricing helium low, so as to allow it to be used in party balloons instead of MRI units, &c.
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Ok, so what is stopping some enterprising person or entity from purchasing huge reserves of helium at these rock bottom prices?
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Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so what is stopping some enterprising person or entity from purchasing huge reserves of helium at these rock bottom prices?
The fact that the "helium shortage" [forbes.com] is nonsense made up by bloggers that are dumb enough to think they are smarter than the market, but aren't quite dumb enough to put their money where their mouth is. America's proven reserves of helium will meet current demand for centuries. Unproven, but extractable, reserves are probably an order of magnitude higher. We are not running out of helium, at least not in this millennium.
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Doesn't the story go that we aren't extracting the helium from natural gas anymore because there is no financial incentive while the government is selling off the strategic helium reserve?
... and as soon as the price goes up, the "financial incentive" will return, and we will resume extracting it.
The fact that helium is too cheap and plentiful to even bother collecting is hardly evidence that we are "running out".
If you disagree, and you really think you are smarter than the market, then go invest in helium futures.
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I'm not talking about the fact that Helium is in short supply.
But the article explicitly states they'd be using Helium, and the AC states that "OMG Fireball City LOL"
It
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Yes what a wonderful use for the limited amount of Helium on this planet. Let's put it in baloons to protect ourselves from imaginary threats.
It is not to protect *us*; It is to protect politicians.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:4, Insightful)
Helium is also in short supply and absolutely non-renewable, hydrogen would be a big improvement.
But +1 for the hot air suggestion :-P
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"Fire retardant" actually means, "burns too slowly to be a hazard under most conditions." Helium is completely inert with respect to everything, and will not even form a stable compound with itself. In a closed container helium will put the fire out. Not so much in an open system as it has a low heat capacity compared to something like water, and it fails to smother like CO2 because it tends to float away. It won't interfere with reactions like PKP because it remains unreactive. But inside a blimp? Nothing
still... (Score:2)
still...chances are that this thing will crash to the ground and kill some innocents long before it is used to identify and thwart a foreign attack on D.C.
really...what foreign power would even consider attacking the US homeland...let alone D.C? It would mean their annihilation. this money could be better spent on improving D.C. schools.
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The free marketeers, excuse me the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses"
Please educate me, how socializing losses is even possible at all in a free market? What you're bashing here is a government-controlled economy.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)
Because those who call themselves that often advocate privatizing government resources.
These folks are as interested in a real free market as much as the Chinese are in actual communism.
A free market without government intervention is of course not possible, for reference I suggest Adam Smith. Monopolies and such are a real pain.
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Would you say it's kind of a zone, that has danger in it?
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Would you say that living in DC could be considered... dangerous? Would you say it's kind of a zone, that has danger in it?
I hear there's a highway to DC, too.
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Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, as stated by another...DUH, it's full of helium. Helium is a noble gas, and does not burn. But even if it were filled with hydrogen, AND you hit it with an incendiary round of some sort, I doubt very much that anything would be on fire by the time it landed, from that high up. If you look at the footage of the Hindenburg, you can see that it didn't take terribly long for the hydrogen to burn itself out...now imagine that airship starting its burn 2 miles up instead of less than 100 feet up, and guess how bad the flames would be by the time it landed?
Second of all, fired upon by whom, exactly, and using what? The stats operate at 10,000 feet...that's close to 2 miles. That's further away than any but the very best snipers in the world can shoot, and even then they require exotic hardware like a .50 caliber rifle (of a few types) or the Chey-Tac Intervention system...and they're shooting horizontally, instead of straight up. There's no way to judge crosswinds...which will be of multiple speeds in the intervening distance. And if you shoot from an angle, instead of straight up (because let's face it, the anchor for the stat won't exactly be something you can walk up to...or anywhere near it, and keep in mind how people will come running once they hear the deafening report of a high-power rifle) then the range gets even worse. You're not going to sneak up on it with a plane, obviously, and if you fired at it with a MANPADS (if you can even find one with that range...most cannot hit something that far away) you will miss because it doesn't have a significant heat signature. And if you are a bad guy and have one of the better MANPADS available to you while you're walking around in Washington, DC...why are you shooting at a blimp?
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Appears none of you faggots know the difference between further and farther. What a bunch of losers.
Better than not knowing how to act like a decent human being. I can fix that one thing in five minutes...tomorrow, you'll still be an asshole :)
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Yes, a giant ball of gas catching fire when fired upon and crashing into DC will sure help protect it.
At that altitude it will burn up long before it reaches the ground.
And there's no reason it would burst into flames anyway if it's properly grounded.
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If hydrogen is mixed with oxygen in the right proportions, it becomes an incredibly dangerous substance.
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Water?
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Re:Why not use hydrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
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If hydrogen is mixed with oxygen in the right proportions, it becomes an incredibly dangerous substance.
Absolutely! And if it mixed in the right proportions and allowed to combine correctly the product can be really dangerous, for instance, it can cause fatal hyper-hydration.
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If an ignition source is then added.
Keeping the proportions away from the danger zone is not hard, blimps don't catch fire so easily when they aren't painted with rocket fuel, and if they do and nobody's around...so what?
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We should come up with some kind of blimp system to prevent that.
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These things are almost entirely made of cloth, probably with a couple hundred pounds of metal on board, packaged tightly together. Fly one over an open field and it will be fine.
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Um, no.
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You could say that about any element we might face a shortage of.
Given unlimited funds you can always make your own elements. Since that is not true your statement is pretty nonsensical.
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Wow forbes, truly they have no agenda.
What the fine article fails to mention is how little helium is captured at wells. There is no point in figuring how much is in fraking wells since none of them capture any of it.
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No, because that kind of demand is very elastic.
Joe Consumer would just stop buying it and there will be little incentive to capture it.
All shortages are economic, if you had unlimited money/other resources you could make all your own elements. So that is a nonsense statement.
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Which is all academic considering the cost of tapping it vs the people will to pay that true cost.
Most helium is bought buy folks unwilling to the pay costs you are talking about. They will simply go without helium balloons for Tiimy's party. Then the only folks left buying it will be MRI users and the like who have no other options thus driving the price through the roof.
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That was my first thought too, but these operate in a completly different way. Barrage ballons were themselves the anti-air defence, carrying strong cables to ensnare low-flying attackers. These blimps are just radar platforms. Their advantage is just price: It's cheaper to keep a blimp inflated than to keep a radar-helicopter in the air.
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Hey, don't forget Rush Limbaugh's contributions too.
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You've gotta give it a PR angle... tell em its to protect them from west nile virus mosquitoes (DC is pretty much a swamp in the summer, so they'll love this idea)
Re:The REAL solution (Score:5, Funny)
You've gotta give it a PR angle...
The Freedome.
That'll be $100,000.
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Meh it's playing with words. An aerostat is still a blimp, and a blimp is still a balloon, just as a Cessna and a kite are both aircraft.
If it had a rigid frame it could even be a zeppelin and an aerostat at the same time.
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*Cessna and a kite are both fixed wing aircraft. Balloons are aircraft too.
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If it had a rigid frame it could even be a zeppelin and an aerostat at the same time.
I'm sorry but, no.
Because nobody would ever buy a record album by a band named:
"Led Zeppelostat"
Strat
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Good thing no plane will ever be hijacked again. They'll either make it to the destination or explode before anyone knows there's a problem.
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If you weren't such douchebags to so many people of the planet... You wouldn't need to worry so hard about 'threats'...
Not being an ass is even free.
So how much money have you spent?