Posted on 07/14/2005 1:00:09 AM PDT by DollarBill
Was there a night-time launch from Cape Canaveral? A rocket flew directly over my house - 40 NW of Chicago. The noise woke me up and I went outside and saw a rocket, still very loud, going in a NE direction, continuing to get higher and higher in the distance. Did anyone else see or hear this?
No, it was a jet... The "fireball" at the end of it was pretty big, the noise was exactly like a rocket or shuttle, but there is nothing on the news? When I first heard it and looked outside, I thought NASA decided to launch the shuttle 12 hours after the failed launch. Interesting....
Secret mission from Vandenburg, maybe. Don't they have launch facilities there? That would also give it a NE track going over you.
A sounding rocket or low earth orbit satellite launched from Wallops Island, VA maybe? During Gulf War I there were almost daily launches at odd trajectories. Also, polar orbit satellites like the Iridium telephone satellites are launched north-south.
See http://www.wff.nasa.gov/missions/index_missions.php
A launch from Wallops would have gone along the coast or over the ocean. Rarely, if ever, are orbital rockets launched heading west, since they need the added boost from earth's spin (W to E) to achieve orbital speed. Any launch going over the Chicagoland area would have had to come from West, and most likely Southwest of the area.
Plus, solid-fueled sounding rockets are closer to fireworks than to the (primarily)liquid-fueled rumble of the shuttle. They hit altitude and pop out their payload pretty quickly, without much progress over the ground. At least, that's what they were like when my father was launching them from Wallops.
DB,
Not to go too far off the mark here, but could it have been a military missile?
In the early 90s a sub-launched missile was fired over populated areas of CA to impact near Ft Irwin, as part of an exercise.
The newspaper is generally a repository for other reports phoned in by citizens if they saw what you saw. I wouldn't bother LE as they usually don't have the time to handle phone calls and questions. In fact, they're probably checking with the newspaper staff, also.
Leni
Now just go back to sleep.
Pierre Salinger is raving about it on FoxNews right now! ;)
Is that what that button does? Loving my new night job at Cape Canaveral, by the way.
;-D
Pekin, Illinois
Funniest thing I heard all week.
I saw one go over Peoria about two years ago around 2:00 AM going from north to south. I wrote the local radio station the next day to ask if anyone else saw it and couple responded that they saw it too. I can't rule out that it was a metoer but I watched missles launch all the time in the Navy and what I saw was a missle.
Wow! I see the thread is still alive!
I'm glad to hear to that you have seen a missile or a rocket flying that trajectory in the past.
I just e-mailed a website that tracks all rocket/missile launches from around the world to see if anything was launced last night.
I'll keep you posted....
Thanks!
It was a different time back then. 1957 or '58.
Space is one cold M&$%^%$^F'er.
That is wierd. I didn't know any place in ILL was flat enough to have be able to view that much sky without the obstruction of hills, trees, bldgs, etc. Maybe out in a flat desert, or perched atop a very high mountain, you would be able to see that much unobstructed sky. Or.........maybe if something were crossing the sky at an incredibly slow speed.
If I'm lucky enough to see a shooting star cross the sky, it might remain visible for a few seconds max, before it disappears beyond trees or other houses.
But what do I know....I don't do much star gazing.
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