Modern flat-earthers believe that space is fake, that there's no such a thing. Thus, consequently, they don't believe that we are sending satellites to space, and instead they are just helium balloons.
There are, of course, myriads of problems with that belief.
One has to wonder why would every single country that has sent satellites into orbit agree on the exact same lie, and have been agreeing with it for as long as there have been satellite launches. Why would, for example, the Soviet Union agree with the United States to lie about this, even at the height of the Cold War (where especially the Soviet Union would have loved nothing but to discredit the United States for something they were doing.) Why would the millions of scientists, engineers, technicians, and every single person directly involved in designing, manufacturing and deploying the rockets and the satellites, agree to this, with not a single whistleblower?
Seriously, if we indeed lived in a bizarro neo-Bronze-Age, like flat-earthers seem to think we do, where we can't send anything to space and for some bizarre reason every single country in the world has secretly agreed to lie about it, and in reality they are just using balloons instead of actual satellites, wouldn't it be much easier and simpler to just claim that we don't have the technology to go to space, and just be completely open about the balloons? When it comes to the satellites themselves, there would be nothing to hide, nothing to lie about, nothing to keep secret, no super-secret operations needed to create fake rocket launches with fake satellites, and having to deploy the balloons in secret and hope that nobody discovers the fraud?
But anyway, that's not the major problem with the flat-earthers' claim. There are myriads of much worse problems with the idea that they are just helium balloons.
You see, individual satellites can be tracked, even by amateurs. Heck, individual satellites can even be filmed, especially the low-earth-orbit ones, especially at night.
The problem is that satellites move very fast. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes, give or take, for a typical low-earth-orbit satellite to fly from horizon to horizon when viewed from the ground.
That actually happens to be approximately the same amount of time that a passenger plane typically takes to fly from horizon to horizon, when viewed from the ground.
The typical cruising speed of a passenger plane is about 800 to 900 km/h, or 500 to 600 mph. And satellites, even in the flat-earther imaginary world, fly higher than passenger planes.
So the question becomes: How exactly do helium balloons achieve a flying speed of 800-900 km/h, and even larger, given that they are higher than passenger planes?
As has been filmed by many amateurs, satellites fly in all kinds of directions, and they all fly in perfectly straight lines across the sky. Wind currents cannot reach those speeds nor explain how they fly in those perfectly straight lines. So what exactly is the propulsion system of these "helium balloons"? And how exactly are they capable of maintaining this constant speed for days, weeks, months and even years?
This is, once again, one of those questions that flat-earthers just completely ignore. While they love to talk about the satellite-balloons themselves, and will sometimes talk about them for hours in their podcasts, this particular question of their flying speed never comes up. they don't talk about it, they never mention it, they never ask questions about it, they never think about it. Their talking points end in "they are helium balloons" and stop there. They never go any further.
Ironically geostationary satellites are also a problem for flat-earthers.
After all, how exactly would you keep a helium balloon perfect still, without being displaced by winds and air currents? And it's not there for just a few minutes but for literally years. Anybody who has a satellite dish pointed at one can corroborate that there's something there sending signals, and it's not moving.
What exactly is this mysterious technology that allows these helium balloons to stay at high altitude perfectly stationary, without being affected by air currents?
On top of that, helium balloons cannot stay airborne forever. No matter how good the balloon material is, it will leak gas, especially helium. Any other lighter-than-air gas will also be slowly leaked. It's simply impossible to keep a balloon airborne for weeks, months and even years. (Yes, even weather balloons only fly for a time before they fall down because of having leaked too much helium.)
Once again, flat-earthers never talk about it, never mention it, never question it, never even think about it. "It's a balloon" is where their rhetoric stops. They don't want to think about it any further because it would just raise uncomfortable questions.
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