Imperial Valley Press

The balloon is up

- RICHARD RYAN Richard Ryan is at rryan@sdsu.edu.

Recently, I celebrated a birthday. (Don’t ask.) My daughter gave me a card. Two cats wearing tiny party hats with one holding a bunch of balloons. The message said, “Geoff soon realized that giving someone the same number of helium balloons as their age was not without it’s problems….” The drawing showed the balloon- laden cat floating away.

Did I hear that this was one of the explanatio­ns the Chinese Foreign Minister gave concerning the large Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina? The balloon package was a birthday present to President Joe Biden. Don’t grab the strings, Joe. You’ll float away. You’d be over China by now.

As you know the balloon overflight has led to a diplomatic scuffle between the U. S. and China, further fraying relations. The very large balloon was first cited over the northwest U.S. The Montana Guns Over America Associatio­n regretted not being able to shoot down the balloon. They bragged that they had the firepower even though the darned balloon was at 80,000 feet. One spokespers­on for the associatio­n said they shoot down high flying ducks at that altitude.

A U. S. Air Force general was interviewe­d on Saturday Night Live. He pointed out that the West Coast’s first line of defense against such over flights is the Seattle Space Needle.

Its drawback is that it’s a stationary building. The U. S. military decided to allow the large balloon, 200 feet tall with a 2,000 pound payload, to traverse the U. S. Then the military shot it down off the coast of South Carolina. Weeks later, Nikki Haley stated she thought the balloon had been launched to celebrate her presidenti­al kickoff campaign in Charleston.

All of a sudden, the U. S. military and spokespers­ons for other countries are discoverin­g a history of balloon flyovers. The Defense Department received 366 reports of UFOs since March 2021. It is estimated that about half of them appeared to be balloons or drones. But no one knows how many might have been Chinese surveillan­ce balloons.

After Republican­s criticized the Biden Administra­tion for failing to shoot down the balloon once it was identified, it was disclosed that three or more balloons briefly flew over the U.S. during the Trump Administra­tion. Few officials were notified, and it was reported that former President Trump was occupied transporti­ng numerous boxes of papers to Mar-a-Lago. Trump said he’d soon bring up the issue with the Chinese. He was scheduled to call them about a Trump luxury golf resort, and it was OK with him if they wanted to send notes by balloon.

Interestin­gly, there was little complainin­g by lawmakers over the cost of U. S. jets intercepti­ng wayward balloons. The F- 22 stealth jets cost $ 143 million apiece. The enhanced Sidewinder missile used to shoot down the largest balloon cost $ 400,000. In contrast, the other smaller balloons cost between $12 and $180. One may be from an Illinois hobbyist club, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. The NIBBB members will have a lot to talk about during their next meeting. And what might the reaction be if it’s discovered that another of the balloons was a National Weather Service balloon or one on a NASA data gathering mission?

As you know, we can’t launch helium filled party balloons from here. The Imperial Irrigation District warns us of dire consequenc­es if a metallic helium balloon touches high tension wires. All TV screens will go dark. We won’t be able to follow the unfolding drama of balloon flyovers. Perhaps, it is simply a new service by DoorDash. Alas, we may never know.

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