Go Fast - Balloon theory

[Scaramanga]

There has been discussion recently on social media regarding the possibility of Go Fast being a balloon.
Supposedly Go Fast was at around 13k feet it's being said and 300 miles off the coast.
The 300 miles is from a quote by Graves who said they were about that far out doing a race track pattern around the carrier when the flight crew saw Gimbal.
Of course Go Fast was supposedly filmed 16 minutes lqater by the same crew. So should be a round the same area.

Here is the debate on the balloon theory.

Those saying it cant be a balloon have brought up the points below.

1) A balloon rises at around 2 m/s and if went out to 300 miles off shore, it would need to have been travelling at 540 mph horizontally to get to a point 300 miles off shore and only be at 13k feet alt (due to the 2 m/s ascension)

My contention to this is that a balloon can be released :

A) partially deflated and only reach 13k feet top alt
B) or the balloon may slowly deflate as it rises resulting in a slowing ascesion rate and a final top alt of 13k feet
C) or as it leaked it may have gone higher than 13k feet, and was seen at 300 miles out when it had descended to 13k feet

In either case ending up 300 miles off shore at 13k feet


Are my theories sound, or am I missing something here that makes it impossible for a balloon to be 300 miles off shore and at 13k feet?

One is assuming that the balloon actually came from the nearest shore. We actually have no idea. It might have been round the world twice for all we know.

 

[dimebag2]

What if Gimbal/GoFast happened on the evening of January 24 EST? And not Jan21. Jan25 2:30 UTC is the date that is indicated in the metadata of the Gimbal video.



January 25 is also the dates given for these events (referred to as the new "Tic-Tac events"), in an unclassified DoD email Marik had found.

Source: https://twitter.com/MvonRen/status/1520055496836718593?s=20&t=If3RD6rJKKQVRkyjFkaVkQ


This correspond to 9:30pm local (EST), and R. Graves has said Gimbal was filmed in the evening at the end of a training exercise.

The evening of January 24 is a much closer match as far as wind speed close to 25000ft, compared to Januray 20. At 8pm local (Jan25 1UTC), now we find the wind being >110 knots at 300 miles off Jacksonville. The wind is also stronger at 14000ft that evening, but for the wind to reach 100Knots they would have to be very far off the coast.

Jan 25 1UTC (8pm local EST)

Below I show it a bit earlier, 5pm local, to check the whole evening. Jacksonville is right in the band of strong westerlies at 24000ft (probably a bit stronger at 25000ft, i.e. ~120Knots).

So there is a strong possibility that Gimbal was filmed on January 25 UTC, despite the official document released by the Black Vault dating the events to January 21. Maybe a bureaucratic mistake?

It doesn't change the analyses, it only removes any remaining possibility that the Atlas rocket has something to do with it. I also like January 24 better because that's my birthday
For GoFast, more room for wind versus intrinsic speed, although the wind still does not reach the estimated ground speed me and Mick have found (>100 Knots).


Jan 24 22UTC (5pm local EST)

 

[jackfrostvc]

I think I mentioned this before, but did you account for ocean water speed? Rather than assume it's static

 

[JMartJr]

I think I mentioned this before, but did you account for ocean water speed? Rather than assume it's static

Speed of wave propagation is the key, I think... actual speed of the water is probably not detectable.

 

[ventsyv]

Didn't someone post a link where you can track meteorological balloons? I think it was in one of the threads dedicated to the Chinese spy balloon and related objects.
I don't have time now, but might be worth taking a look to see if there are any balloons in that area at the time of the video.