It sounds like it wasnt detected until after it was already over the US and they shot it down over ~47ft deep water so it can be recovered pretty easily
Helicopters can’t fly to 65000 ft, due to the low air density.
A ladder perhaps? Or ... another balloon!
With another balloon? You'd just want to cut off and grab the payload, right?
Not gonna lie, I don't know. But I feel like it's probably more useful to gather information on it than to destroy it.
How would you collect it?
Trying to remember what it was called but there was a 60/70s era program that was declassified that claimed to capture returning satellites from orbit using massive nets/parachutes carried behind large aircraft for example a c47 that would snap them right out of the air as they are falling.
Corona. They caught film canisters from spy satellites with nets hanging from planes
That’s capturing film reels dropped from Anerican spy satellites during the Cold War. They were tiny compared to this gigantic balloon