I LIVE here, pal. It's MY ass that stands to get blown to smithereens, MY FAMILY'S ASSES that stand to get blown to kingdom-come. Pretty much all of my immediate and extended family for now seven generations (counting the two generations after me) lives on the southern part of the CA coast within range of where such a missile would hit. So you can take your "you want to believe it" sh*t and shove it up your butt. You're the one so desperately wanting to beleive that a missile was UPS plane that you will ignore the physical reality of lighting.
As Gargantua said, echoing pretty much word-for-word a world-class professional expert on aviation lighting and perspective who has forgotten more about the perspective and lighting of things that "originate hundreds of miles west" on an ocean horizon, etc. etc. that you have ever learned, and with whom I have personally discussed this and who has looked at the photos and rolled his eyes at the likes of you, ex98C:
... No "jet contrail" would have that much mass at its furthest-away point (close to 400 miles from this perspective if it were from a jet at 30,000+ feet). Plus the base is way in the foreground compared to what this photo shows as the "horizon." Also, you can see even more clearly that the trail is backlit, as would be a launch efflux rising vertically, and not underlit as would be a jet contrail stretched horizontally at 30,000+ feet at this time of day.
As much as you want to believe it, it wasn't an airplane.
Your lighting ‘expert’ is going to have to explain away the weather satellite pic of the contrail coming from the southwest, then. Maybe he won’t roll his eyes as much when he realizes he FOS. And the fact that this has been repeated several times since the original post, of the same flight following the same flight path. That is why it has dropped out of the news, except for the “OMG! Dr Evil has missiles and is going to kill my family to the 7th generation’ crowd.
It was an airplane.