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> A cylinder that was 20’ long, and 5’ in radius

Your are dramatically underestimating the size of these things:

The Chinese high-altitude balloon shot down over the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina over the weekend was 200 feet tall and carried a payload the size of a regional airliner, a U.S. Air Force general said in a briefing on Monday.

The balloon's superstructure and hardware weighed "in excess of a couple thousand pounds," said Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-spy-balloon-size-200-ft-jet-a...

Here's a similar sized one NASA put up a few years ago: https://remus.jpl.nasa.gov/balloon.htm