Mystery missile launch': Chinese missile test or airline contrail?

examiner.com ^ | 11/12/10 | Joe Newby

[Korah]

A report posted today at a CNN website claims the "mystery missile launch" on Monday was actually a Chinese missile test. According to the report:

China flexed its military muscle Monday evening in the skies west of Los Angeles when a Chinese Navy Jin class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, deployed secretly from its underground home base on the south coast of Hainan island, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from international waters off the southern California coast. WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia, including Japan, say the belief by the military commands in Asia and the intelligence services is that the Chinese decided to demonstrate to the United States its capabilities on the eve of the G-20 Summit in Seoul and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Tokyo, where President Obama is scheduled to attend during his ten-day trip to Asia.

However, the report - placed on CNN's user-generated iReport site - has yet to be vetted or confirmed by CNN, and is full of un-named, unquoted sources. The only link provided goes to a site with basically the same report - again, with no corroboration.

The source of the report is one Wayne Madsen, who once claimed Wikileaks was a CIA operation, and that Al-Qaeda was a front for the military-industrial complex.

No other news organization is reporting the incident as part of a Chinese missile test at this time.

A much less sinister explanation is provided by a site called "Contrail Science".

According to a report at that site, the CBS camera crew probably captured Flight AWE808 from Hawaii to Phoenix, and the perspective of the the viewer made the contrail appear to be a ballistic missile being launched, possibly, from a submarine.

The site reports a very similar incident:

An interesting contrail cropped up off the coast of San Clemente, Orange County, California on December 31st 2009. The curious shape led.......

(Excerpt) Read more at Examiner.com...

[hedgetrimmer]

The Soviets are long gone

From Russia. They're here now, in every regional council and tax exempt political pressure NGO.

They are behind every surveillance camera and internet data mine that tracks and stores private information on American citizens forever.

They're in our teaching colleges teaching teachers, and in our schools teaching our kids.

They are in the State Department, the EPA, HUD and every executive branch bureaucracy.

They are in Congress and in the White House.

Things are working out just as they have planned.

[TigersEye]

A hot missile that had to be aborted? I would think it would have had a self destruct after so much altitude.

That's true. You would think so.

[Eye of Unk]

I just cruised their discussion forums, absolutely NOTHING about this aircraft or anything about this contrail business, no pilots saying anything. No talk at all saying it was or wasn’t a contrail.

A black hole?

[RobRoy]

>>Is there something upsetting about looking for the truth?<<

TRUTHER!!!

;)

This crap is getting out of hand. Snap out of it, folks. This stupid “missile” launch conspiracy theory garbage could destroy the credibility of Freerepublic.

Snap out of it folks. Please, PLEASE start looking at this objectively. It should not be this hard. The evidence has been plastered all over several threads. I’m seeing the same, frankly, stupid arguments being made over and over even though they were utterly debunked days ago.

[TigersEye]

They say if you tossed a half dollar out of an orbiting shuttle the reflection is so bright you would think it’s the moon. /s

[Seven plus One]

Some don't think it's possible to have an accurate idea how fast it was traveling either from the small snippets of video and with the changing zoom levels. I do.

The video was actually very good. That the object was travelling about 15 degrees to the right helped with perspective, knowing where the launch point was (ballpark) allows us to estimate altitude by triangulation. It was heading downstream through the stratosphere in seconds. Anything accelerating that fast toward Phoenix would have arrived there by the end of the video, but that would be behind the cameraman, not receding into space in front of him, apparently firing a second stage. It aint rocket science. (wait a minute) Can't prove much in the way of specific, definite physical data from the video, but it is a very good bullshit antidote when panning for facts.

[ResearchMonkey]

Not really. To have filmed 808 he would have to shot towards the West. His shooting location would have needed to be south or at least equal to the flight to capture what we saw veering to the left of the frame.

Some of our debunkers seem to be trying awful hard to make us accept what they want us to.

[Eye of Unk]

What I meant is this is a black hole, all the news was sucked off to a different dimension. Sanitization?

And further yet why would anyone get upset here at FR if we discuss who, how or why it could be a missile or could it be an optical illusion like twirling a card with a free flying bird on one side and a birdcage on the other.

[TigersEye]

That contrail is also pretty doggone skinny at the bottom. No comparison.

[Yaelle]

Look. It’s probably a contrail. It sounds so logical and all. But it was so unusual for around here, and I see these contrails all the time. The only thing I’ve ever seen that looked like that was a shuttle or missile. So it’s weird, and it is not STUPID to question it.

[RobRoy]

>>Commercial aircraft rarely make any noticeable course corrections while flying at altitude.<<

You must not fly much. I’ve experienced it a LOT. Of course, I’m actually paying attention when it happens.

Oh, and even if it did only happen “rarely”, that is all it would take to explain bends in this trajectory. What causes conspiracy theories to arise from an otherwise easily explained event is that it is relatively rare.

And you still looks like a lot of stills of aircraft contrails that have been posted over the last several days. The stills are nothing more than a curiosity, for the simple reason that they offer just enough evidence to generate questions, rather than provide answers.

Of course, that is the mothers milk of conspiracy theories.

[Yaelle]

I know; as I just said in the previous, it is not STUPID to wonder and question why this doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to be.

If he was north of the peninsula, you would see it in his filming if he was filming south. I am not sure exactly his location or his direction in shooting the “thing.”

[Seven plus One]

Hmmm. Thank you.

[RobRoy]

>>I just cruised their discussion forums, absolutely NOTHING about this aircraft or anything about this contrail business, no pilots saying anything. No talk at all saying it was or wasn’t a contrail.<<

I suspect they are laughing about it while being patted down in TSA checkpoints. :)

[TigersEye]

How would a silver jet give off that bright of a glow? I’ve seen thousands of jets fly over the Rockies at sunset and never saw anything like that. I saw one shuttle launch from the cape (Challenger) and it looked just like that.

[RobRoy]

>>So it’s weird, and it is not STUPID to question it.<<

I agree. I questioned it at first. It is not stupid to question it. It IS stupid to STILL be questioning it if you have been actually following the evidence for the last few days.

For those just starting to follow this, I am not surprised they are questioning it. That is healthy. But there are too many that are choosing which raw facts to believe and which ones to throw out. Heck, we have pictures of the same flight 808 on different days. The contrail is the exact same trajectory. The only difference is the density of the trail, due to different atmospheric conditions.

Yes, it is unusual, but not THAT unusual. It is one of the more dramatic aircraft contrails. There is ample and irrefutable evidence that it is the same contrail that that flight creates every day, more or less so, depending on the wind and humidity.

There simply is no there, there. It is like the face on mars. An optical illusion. And once you see it for what it is, the illusion vaporizes.

[RobRoy]

>>I’ve seen thousands of jets fly over the Rockies at sunset and never saw anything like that.<<

I’ve seen ‘em in Seattle and I HAVE seen them give off that glow. It is rare, but it does happen. Heck, if this thing was not rare, we would not be discussing it at all.

[Eye of Unk]

Lets throw this into the equation, volcanic ash uplifted into the jetstream, possibly high in refractory silica, in other words reflective or of a high albedo?

[TigersEye]

Yes, things seem to be hushed up. There is a very concerted effort here at FR to silence any talk about it too. If you check the keywords on these threads they are being spammed like a wave of DU or ChiCom trolls.

I don't see why CBS-LA doesn't release the entire video to the public at this point. It was said two nights ago that the gov had confiscated the video but I haven't seen a source for that claim. And we haven't seen the whole video uncut and unedited. If CBS has it they are intentionally feeding the confusion and that doesn't surprise me either.

[TigersEye]

What you feel when you fly doesn’t have any bearing on what a person sees from the ground does it? Try to use your head. I lived a mile from and international airport for 27 years. I have traveled every western state and spent hundreds of hours in the field collecting plants from dawn to dusk. I have seen contrails.