Wow, looks like the FAA has put out a Temporary Restricted Area off the NC/SC coast, surface to 60K feet and prohibiting all civil aircraft operations. This is pretty unusual, maybe setting up for a balloon shoot down?
You can see pretty clearly the hole in the airspace.
Though there do appear to be a couple of tankers, a USCG C-130, and a USCG helo in the area. May be some fighters out there too, of course, that aren't broadcasting ADS-B.
Oh hey, looks like USS Carter Hall (LSD 50), an amphibious assault ship, got under way this morning and is headed into the area. Could be a pretty useful ship for picking stuff up.
Update: looks like a US survey vessel was operating last night at slow speed about 30nm off Myrtle Beach. Seems like a long way from the balloon shootdown spot inside the 12nm line, but who knows how far the balloon wreckage might have been carried in the wind from 65K ft.
Crunching some rough numbers, this makes sense. The balloon started around 65K feet. From what I can tell, a typical parachute descends ~1500ft/min. Let's double that to 3K ft/min for this thing, => a ~20 min descent. With winds aloft ~60 kts, that's 20nm drift.
12nm+20nm=32nm.
12nm+20nm=32nm.
I was RIGHT. Of course, didn't have to be a genius to figure this out.
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