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:Posted on 11/12/2010 7:02:24 PM PST by 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.......
>>Filming a moving rocket is challenge, if you don’t think so go watch a few NASA videos from launches.<<
I agree. Filming an airplane with a zoom can be a challenge as well. As I’ve said in previous posts, I’ve used a telescope with a 70 power eyepiece to track high altitude aircraft on multiple occasions. The close the aircraft gets, the harder it is to stay locked on because the relatie x/y axis speed increases. As they go away they are easier to track because there is less relative movement in the x/y axis.
The notam was not for that airspace.
Big difference between analogue photography and digital videography. Old film is infinite pixels.
Nonetheless, adding a doubling lens will degrade you ability to control the shot. The better the lens’ the more room you will have theoretically. The effect I’m talking about is far more noticeable with wide-angles, there is a zone it works good in then you begin to lose control once you get out of that zone.
Had this camera not been maxed in its parameters it would have been clearer. Had he the proper filters for the atmospherics it would have been clearer.
If your assessment of this being an aircraft moving towards the camera my points would be moot. The shot of a closer object moving at a lower speed and altitude would have been much easier to capture with the set-up mounted on that chopper.
Nah. When it comes to Robbie here, it's called desperation. Same thing we see from outlets like factcheck and FightTheSmears. Just keep trumpeting that the earth is flat, and stick to it.
Check his profile :).
Doesn’t really matter if the photographer filmed for ten minutes, or for 20 minutes.
You can see the entire track being laid, and that the event was over in seconds. Whatever might be lingering after, has nothing to do with anything.
Yeah, well... if that thing had taken out a US city, you'd have to handle a president declaring all kinds of stuff - in a major mosque, in his real country, with the power to declare martial law, and with a whole functional administration and military (34 warships??) in his entourage. Trust me, there wouldn't even be a thought about handling Iran.
Watch search activity. Someone will try to locate the missile, to see if there was a warhead.
The Iranians have an impressive track record of malfunctioning stuff :).
I’ll have to disagree. Since there are still many questions I think any information would be welcomed.
What happens with the residual track may reveal information such as altitude, direction and other variations of degradation and shadowing.
It’s again worth noting that camera operator said the event ended. How can an event traveling towards you be over without passing you?
These guys over at professionalsoldiers.com seem to think so and they linked to a skyvector chart here to show the area that exact NOTAM was for. Smack dead centered on Catalina Island which is dead on for flight 808's route.
And contrary to what you've been saying they don't think this was a plane or a joke and in the process of finding that chart I scrolled through several civilian pilot's forums and they don't either. All anyone has to do is Google one to find out what a BSer you are. ;-)
It is amazing that this has to be said over and over and over again and still it doesn't penetrate.
Of course. But for determining if this was a missile or a plane, you don't need the residuals, just to look at the thing go and how fast it was out of sight. The argument that is being used around this board is that it somehow took a long time to form that track, in aid of the idea that it was a plane.
Hmmm. Got a question for you - you don’t have to answer, of course.
Are you .Gov connected? I ask because you list yourself in the DC area, and a mainframe programmer. I *think* most mainframes in the DC area are doing government connected stuff, but I may be wrong ;).
I know! It's kind of amusing to see all these people posting still pics of contrails as "proof" of the contrail take that actually end up emphasizing how unlike a contrail this thing was! I live with a person who literally makes his living understanding perspective and lighting with regard to aviation. He is as expert as it gets in that particular area. He just shrugs and shakes his head at people who don't get how the images in the video (which we haved both watched about a dozen times by now, trying to contort and rationalized into the idea that this could be an airplane contrail, let alone an airplane headed toward Phoenix) are obviously of an object moving away in a direction north-northwest.
Then again, he taught perspective and lighting at college levels for years and knows exactly how its concepts are beyond the ken of some. He is much more inclined to be wisely philosophical about the futility of debating with such folks.
That is why I asked them to explain why the bottom of contrails were bright in the sun setting examples they kept posting. Trying to make them see the error of their ways. That is about all you can do. Once they understood why the contrail bottoms were bright, then they could go back to the video and see that it was not uniformly bright. So the contrail could not be heading East to West against a setting sun that was not setting where the contrail reached the horizon. If it ever did. The Video shows a plume arcing toward the setting sun. The bright right side is illuminated by the setting sun. The dark left side is being shaded. That is painfully obvious if you understand lighting, but the government apparently has assembled its cover story team and we will be the loons. Been there before.
Had we launched a missile from a sub without first notifying the Russians, we'd be hearing about it.
Should read. So the contrail could not be heading West to East against a setting sun...
US cruise missiles for one.
As I understand it, cruise missiles in their cruise mode actually function with a jet engine, and therefore have no rocket plume. Some cruise missiles are launched with rockets, but this takes seconds, not minutes.
We do not know what type of missile it was
Since the exact same phenomenon was seen at the exact same time the following day, and at the exact time that a known passenger flight was coming in from the Pacific, we know for certain that it was not a missile.
Not the exact same phenomenon. That is covered later in the thread. No one is stating that aircraft plumes do not look like rocket plumes. They can. The question is whether this specific plume was rocket or aircraft. Now if you admit that they can look similar, you admit it could be a rocket.
I looked at the 52 second video. It appears to be a jumbled series of about 7 cuts that were taken from various vantage points over an unknown period of time. It's not even clear that they are in the correct time sequence. Contrary to your assertion I don't see much happening to the contrail in any of the individual cuts. There is some apparent motion in the first cut due to the camera zooming in.
I really wish you nutcases claiming ten minutes of video would bother to watch the actual video.
The raw video does not last 10 minutes, although it appears possible that the various cuts may have been filmed over a 10 minute period. I wasn't able to track down the original source (directly from the cameraman) for the 10 minute figure. The cameraman definitely did say that he saw the same type of thing on two other nights.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.