> Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead.
And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? Does China think NORAD is a joke or that we're incapable of modelling weather patterns?
> And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it?
It doesn't fly wherever the wind takes it. It is designed to move vertically between air layers to whichever layer has wind blowing in the direction it wants to go, and it has turbines to steer itself a little bit on top of that, that's why it's got almost 15kw of solar power onboard. You can literally maneuver the thing in a box-shaped pattern between those air currents and make it hold position over a target area, or at least you can try. Google was doing this a decade ago and it works pretty well.
> Much like hot air balloon pilots would do to get from place-to-place, these unmanned balloons ride global wind currents like rivers, climbing, and sinking to find the right flow to get to a destination. Google’s computers take weather data from NOAA and determine which current they need to hitch a ride on to reach their destinations. The balloons can only go up or down.
Maybe not. Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead.