Take a look a this photo of the "Mystery Missile" as it rises straight up and then disappears ...

State of the Nation ^ | November 12th 2010 | Myself

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Are you seriously going to tell me that this is an airliner and not a missile???

Are you seriously going to tell me that this is an airliner and not a missile???

[Miss Behave]

LOL

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Here is my first photo that I asked everyone about:

Tell me, do you really think that this is an airliner and not a missile launch, as the Jane's expert is calling it and as the former Under Secretary of Defense is calling it???

http://state-of-the-nation.com/

Tell me, do you really think that this is an airliner and not a missile launch, as the Jane's expert is calling it and as the former Under Secretary of Defense is calling it???

[Electric Graffiti]

From The Voice of Russia

The former commander of the Russian airborne troops, Colonel-General Georgy Shpak agrees with the latter conclusion.

“It was a vapour trail off a passenger plane and there cannot be other options,” says Georgy Shpak. “The trail was filmed from a helicopter flying over it, and most likely, there were some changes in the footage showing the trail similar to that of a flying missile. I believe, that this was an attempt to falsify facts because American experts had given an official conclusion,” Georgy Shpak said.

There you have it. Confirmation from the Russians that it was a vapor trail off a passenger plane. False alarm everybody.....whew.

[muawiyah]

I grew up in Flyover Country right on Route 2 and am very familiar with contrails ~ those high up, those low down, those going East to West, and those going West to East, North to South, South to North and each and every other direction.

Big planes, small planes, jet fighters of every variety, bombers, passenger jets ~ etc.

This looks like any number of contrails I've seen over the years.

Did you know that contrails are so thick in the American Midwest that they actually changed rainfall patterns?

I also used to dabble in amateur astronomy ~ (have a couple of neat telescopes around here in fact) ~ and understand full well the lensing that takes place the closer a sighting is to the horizon.

I've even flown several million miles where I could LOOK DOWN ON CONTRAILS. Aren't they great?

[muawiyah]

I love that one ~ if, as many here believe, all airplanes fly at the same altitude, we should see lots of debris falling out of the sky from those 6 airplanes that smacked up at the same point.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

So you are calling fellow FReepers “insane” because they don’t agree with you.

So far we have a former Under Secretary of Defense who also doesn’t agree with you;

and the Jane’s expert;

and a number of military and ex-military who strongly don’t agree with you.

Are you so rude as to call them all “insane” too?

Seems rather insulting and also unnecessary to me.

And I was only politely trying to point out that on an Internet discussion board not much can be “proved” - this seems obvious.

---

Did you watch the video?

Did you see the expert Robert Ellsworth say “Stupendous!!! Takes you breath away!!!”

Did you see Doug Richardson from Jane’s, and an Editor at that:

“Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets examined the video for the Times of London and said he was left with little doubt.”

“It’s a solid propellant missile,” he told the Times. “You can tell from the efflux [smoke].”

Richardson said it could have been a ballistic missile launched from a submarine or an interceptor, the defensive anti-missile weapon used by Navy surface ships.

Robert Ellsworth said the identical, the very same thing too-— because one can clearly see that that is what these photos and this video show, amazingly and indeed unfortunately: a missile launch from offshore California.

---

Seems all the “proof” is on our side and all the sneering rudeness is on yours ...

[itsahoot]

uCanSee, Yes we can but apparently you can’t see anything at all.

[raygun]

I seen all the video clips available. I'm unimpressed. While the video certainly is compelling, I find it wholly unconvincing that it is a missle. I argue airplane contrail as devil's advocate.

My money is on natural phenomenon - according to Sherlock Holmesian Razor of Occam school of thought - eliminate the most technical and complicated solutions until only the very simplest theory with least number of assumptions remains: which by default then MUST be true; therefor ortho-linear methane hydrate ejecta-bolide is the causal phenomena which has been observed.

Also, it IS the ONLY theory that can explain ALL the facts. ALL the OTHER theories can only explain SOME of the facts.

[ctdonath2]

This was noticed just after DST ended, so there was a sudden shift in lighting. An unnoticed daily occurrence became dramatically lit and thus stood out.

Just because something cannot be immediately understood doesn’t mean wild interpretations are correct and mundane explanations are wrong.

[r9etb]

So you are calling fellow FReepers “insane” because they don’t agree with you.

Be fair, son. I only said "bordering on insane." But in your case I'm willing to make an exception.

[nuf said]

“We are only discussing here, are we not?

Translation: “Don’t bother me with facts, boy....” “

I think you are reading more than was meant from freedomwarrior998.
A lot of folks on here are reading more into a simple contrail too. The first observer labels the phenomenon as a rocket that lights up the sky. This has an anchoring effect on the mind.
Heck, I still dont know if the Big Foot film is real or not.

[r9etb]

I think you are reading more than was meant from freedomwarrior998.

Actually, the quote was from some another guy's reply to f998, and I just copied him so that he could enjoy the fun.

[Finny]

The pilot who FILMED this, said that he saw almost the EXACT SAME THING a day or two before. How do you explain that?

One point in the contrail argument's favor that is overlooked on this thread quite a lot is that no one is claiming that the plane that supposedly created it was headed into LAX, but that it was headed to Phoenix en route from Hawaii, so it would be at very high altitude.

I agree that the picture doesn't indicate a vertical path and could easily be of something at very high altitude coming over the horizon. But the "vertical" (or not) aspect is not what makes me think it was or wasn't a missile. Instead, it's the shape and density of the plume, the corkscrewing, the single-source, and the testimony of the guy who took the video who said (and I paraphrase) that it disappered UPWARD into the sky, not off in the distant horizon. Planes making contrails disappear in the distance; missiles launching things disappear into the sky. There's a difference, and it sounded to me like the latter is what the cameraman said what happened.

As for your question I put into italics on seeing the exact same thing a day or two before: Living near the coast within sight of Vandenberg launches for virtually half a century, and having an interest in watching the airborne activity out of Vandenberg (watching with binocs, where the burn and separation stages are clearly visible and spectacular), it has been my repeated experience that I'd see the same thing about the same time every night for sometimes several days in a row, or the same time every other day for a week, or in some scheduled pattern -- they weren't always just one-offs. So it is no stretch for me to think this kind of test (I hope that's what it was) was repeated night to night, because of what I've witnessed with my own "lyin' eyes" over the course of the years.

[Drago]

Next day same time, same location..."they" launched again!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJi2L4QC_fk

Now boarding Gate 1! Given similar weather conditions "they" apparently launch every day!

 

"Tell me , do you really think this is an airliner and not a missile launch..."...well this is an airliner contrail photo from Dec. 2009 shot from San Clemente, CA. "It's going straight up!" OMG! Full "props" to Freeper "The Comedian" who posted first.

http://contrailscience.com/

[SeeSac]

I sure can’t argue with you and DU!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4609460

[nuf said]

“But I just read that we are Bigfoot video believers if we see and say so.”

I said this excites me like the public reaction to the big foot film. I didn’t label either opinion as the pro-big foot camp, but now that you mention it!

hehe, this is the most fun Ive had on fr since the 2002 election!

[billhilly]

It is not a plane or contrail. It looks like a sub launched ICBM.

Somebody fired Nancy Pelosi.

[snowrip]

Apparent acceleration is delineated by a number of things: contrail dissipation, background scaling, etc. Judging by how quickly the single visible engine disappears from view, I would say it was moving somewhat faster than a commercial aircraft.

Are you seriously so bad at judging speed that you would chalk it up to the zoom feature on the camera?

[nuf said]

Now I know why people saw sea monsters over the horizon in days gone by. TV news folks love to sensationalize everything for ratings. News used to be about gathering facts, now it’s about gathering opinions that support the sensational.
I usually like to reduce my comments on fr to short, pithy statements or observations. I just cant help myself with this story though, it’s a classic!
I could be wrong, but I’m very comfortable going against the grain in this case.

[Wissa]

and the testimony of the guy who took the video who said (and I paraphrase) that it disappered UPWARD into the sky, not off in the distant horizon.

It's not going to disappear over the horizon because it's approaching you from the west and still hundreds of miles away, near sunset.

The screenshots I've seen made from the video seem to show that it never went more than a couple degrees above the horizon while he was recording. It just looks like it's going higher in the sky when he's zooming in.

From the cameraman's perspective it's rising upward into the sky. In reality, it's simply following the curve of the earth. As it does, it goes from being below the horizon to being above the horizon, and if he would have watched long enough it would have shown itself to be an airplane flying past on it's way to Arizona, or wherever it was going.