comment: >
  
  Just looked it up and oh my if it ain't some Tony Stark shit. The price is also Tony Stark level ($15M for the launcher and then 250k for each missile, probably in 1995 dollars).
context: Well first you have to float up next to it with your own balloon and lawn chair… >
  
  Hold my beer…… >
  
  Your lawn chair has a beer holder, Uncle Bill! >
  
  That's for whisky. >
  
  The hooker from last night? >
  
  Whatchu call me?! >
  
  r/beetlejuicing >
  
  r/lawnchairballoon >
  
  Funniest line / most realistic part from Independence Day: a quick pan across a TV newscast announcing "Police are once again asking residents not to shoot at the alien aircraft." >
  
  if I recall the graphic was a hand gun too. Like that's gonna make it up there. >
  
  A 9mm is probably going to shoot at a maximum of around 4000 feet.  A far cry of the height here.  As well a hand gun's bullets are a bit less stable than a rifle and that roughly 4000 is a perfect system weight / energy calculation.  Probably not over 1500 feet altitude with instability and angle being much less than 90 degrees. >
  
  I enjoy that I mentioned ID and you gave us physics education to class up my 27-year-old reference. Thank you! 😁 >
  
  "Authorities are asking Los Angelinos to not shoot at the alien space craft" >
  
  “For they may inadvertently start an intergalactic war.” >
  
  We're not hosting an intergalactic keger either. >
  
  . . . Zed >
  
  
  Who's Zed?
  
  Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead. >
  
  It’s not a motorcycle baby, it’s a chopper >
  
  I had to crash that Honda baby, now will you please come on? >
  
  It's eleven (corrected) miles away. You're not going to hit it. 
  Even if you do, it will be months before it actually has a noticeable effect. 
  I was a blimp mechanic. We had to do bullet inspections every so often, when the lift calculations showed that our helium purity was dropping. Because of the very low pressures that kept the blimp inflated (about 1 inch of water pressure), it literally took weeks before enough helium leaked out for us to even notice a pencil-sized hole in a blimp the size of a barn. 
  And that's for a blimp at an altitude of 1000 feet, not 60,000 feet. >
  
  Finally someone who knows what they are talking about.
  We'll need thousands of people shooting at it, with the smaller bullets pushing the bigger bullets, to bring this thing down. >
  
  F-22 unclass service ceiling is 65,000 - We could have dropped this with an AMRAAM days ago if it really mattered.
  Alas, the nation has a slight problem with education and while a small portion of gun owners are VERY knowledgeable about ballistics - most people have no clue. >
  
  It doesn't help that right wing failed candidates are posting pictures on Twitter suggesting they're going to take out the balloon with a shotgun. Their indoctrinated followers with terminally low critical thinking skills see that and think "well if she's doing it too, it's my time to shine!" >
  
  Mitt Romney was talking shit about the balloon yesterday and he's supposed to be one of the sane ones >
  
  Hate to break it to you but there's no such thing as a "sane one" >
  
  He's a vulture venture capitalist but he doesn't like the whole dictatorship Trump deal. >
  
  He's fine with Republican dictatorship.  He just doesn't want it to be so crass and uncouth. >
  
  He wants an oligarchy not a dictatorship >
  
  yeah, much better to have like 15 capitalist overlords who are competent at oppressing people than one dolt grifter who gets puppeteered by whoever /s >
  
  Just shoot unparabolically >
  
  I think That might be impossible. Even if you shoot straight up. It will still make a very acute parabolic arc >
  
  Then why is the phrasing “if it comes down parabolically?” >
  
  It's like 65,000 feet in the air. There are no guns that can shoot that down from the ground. But I imagine there's a few rednecks with Anti air cannons in montana >
  
  There are only a handful of dedicated anti-aircraft weapons that can fire that high from the ground and most if not all of them are missiles. Even what is probably the most famous ant-aircraft gun the German 88 only had a ceiling of about 30-35k feet. So, even the rednecks with anti-air cannons are probably out of luck. >
  
  I mean, the 88 was pretty weak by today's standards for high calibre guns.
  The Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun for example has about 4-5x the muzzle energy of the 88 flak. The 88 fired a 9.2 kg projectile at 840 m/s muzzle velocity, the DM63 is a bit over 8 kg at about 1750 m/s and a far more aerodynamic arrow-shaped projectile.
  If we really really wanted to shoot at it with a cannon, we could probably reach the altitude. >
  
  Ah yes, I knew it was my time.
  Give me a minute to pull off the covers on my recreational Rh120 L/44 firing military surplus APFSDS and point it straight up.
  What could possibly go wrong. >
  
  Wasn’t there a Canadian guy who helped Saddam Hussein build some ridiculous artillery that would’ve reached way higher, at its apsis? >
  
  Yes, Project Babylon led by Canadian Gerald Bull. The supergun Big Babylon would of had a bore of ~1m and could theoretically shoot projectiles into orbit but it was never built. >
  
  if you tried to shoot an object into orbit directly it would follow an orbit that intersects the point where you fired it from, so whatever you shoot needs to have its own engine and survive the firing process, which they never even started doing
  the entire project was totally absurd, they were decades and billions of dollars away from even a serious test firing
  the canadian guy is hilarious though, he spent half of the 60s working on a much better funded version for the US, then got assassinated, probably by Mossad, because he was trying to build one for Saddam. This guys only loyalty was to the space guns. >
  
  
  This guys only loyalty was to the space guns.
  
  Wernher von Braun energy for sure. >
  
  That’s a very repetitive article. They repeat the same information in the article. The information is stated multiple times in different ways in this article. >
  
  I’d award this comment if I had one to give. At the moment I have no award. If I did I’d award this. >
  
  Thank you. Thanks. Screw you. >
  
  Random people killed or maimed by random bullets, coming soon to an area near you. >
  
  You will totally see a story of their defense trying to do what guvment wont >
  
  Why not use the Jewish space laser? >
  
  Um, it’s the Sabbath >
  
  Fine, we’ll use the Hindu space laser >
  
  Um, it's Thaipusam?
  In Japan... >
  
  Japan Space Lasers are for Kaiju only. >
  
  Surely they have a Gundam we can borrow? >
  
  Just drop a colony on it >
  
  Gipsy Danger reporting for duty >
  
  They’re trying to shoot it? What do they think it is, a hurricane? >
  
  Oh, great. Now we're going to have  Fox mulling over whether a nuke would be practical. >
  
  The effective range of an AR-15 is 600 yards or 1800 ft. The balloon is 60,000 feet. If my math is cOrrect, grandpas old 12g lever action oughta git it >
  
  Wait till Cletus there brings out his medicinal FIM-92 Stinger, that'll show 'em. >
  
  
  FIM-92 Stinger has an operating ceiling of 11,500 ft (3500 M). Cletus is going to have to bring out his surplus MIM-23 Hawk if he needs to hit 60,000 ft.