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Mystery 'Missile' Launch in the Pacific (California; 2010)

pornosonic1975

pornosonic1975

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'Mystery missile launch reported off California coast


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The vapour trail was seen not far off the coast of Los Angeles
Pentagon officials say they cannot explain reports of a missile launch off the coast of California on Monday.

A CBS News helicopter captured what looked like the vapour trail of a missile rising from the water about 35 miles (56 km) offshore.

"Right now all indications are that it was not [defence department] involvement in this launch" Pentagon spokesman Col David Lapan said.

The Pentagon does not consider the missile a threat.

"So far we've come up empty with any explanation," Col Lapan said. "We're doing everything we can to try to figure out if anybody has any knowledge of what this event may have been."

Under normal circumstances, the launch of a US missile would require several different authorisations and notifications, but none are evident.

It is unclear if the suspected missile was launched from land or sea.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11721981

WTF?! Any ideas people?!
 
I just saw this on the news and jumped on here to see if there was any discussion.

It's hard to get a sense of perspective in the video but the trail looks larger than what I would imagine as a small missile trail (i.e. ground to air) but then again, what do I know?

Well i know one thing, I think we can rule out a chinese lantern!

How long before this gets moved to Ufology?
 
Well, on the CNN site, someone is saying that it's the contrail of a jet and is an optical illusion , however the FAA have already said that there is no record of a flight plan and also, nothing seen on radar at that time. It certainly looks like a ballistic missile or SAM launch. More like a SAM really as they tend to have more curving trajectories like this it seems.... Hmmmm!

TWA flight 800 anyone? The explanation for that was a bit poor to say the least and also, several people saw what they thought was a missile of some kind on that evening too.
 
The trail passes 'close' to an aircraft with flashing lights, but it's impossible to comment on their relative distance.

Also the trail appears to be coming from a bright spot which looks like a typical rocket exhaust.

If the US military genuinely don't know what this is, they must be sh*tting bricks right now!
 
'Missile' fired off California coast

....

"Right now all indications are that there was not Department of Defence involvement in this."

There was speculation that the trail could have been caused by a projectile launched by a private company.

However, any private missile test would have required notification so that boats and planes in the area could be warned, or busy air space near Los Angeles International Airport closed.

Missile tests are common off southern California, with launches being conducted from vessels and platforms out in the Pacific.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) issued a joint statement saying that the vapour trail was not the result of any foreign military launching a missile, but gave no further details.

Robert Ellsworth, a former US Deputy Secretary of Defence, told KFMB, a CBS affiliate in San Diego, one theory might be that it was a military muscle-flexing ploy.

"It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from an underwater submarine, to demonstrate mainly to Asia, that we can do that", he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... coast.html
 
It's a really interesting piece, but I can't quite see how it's an optical illusion. I'd be more likely to believe it's some amatuer rocket launch, possibly from a boat off the Pacific coast.
 
Mystery 'missile' launch in US: the theories
The condensation trail, or contrail, of an apparent missile launch off the coast of California west of Los Angeles has prompted speculation as to what might have caused it. Here are some of the theories.

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets, said it might have been a Standard interceptor, the anti-missile weapon which is fitted to the US Navy's Aegis guided-missile cruisers as part of the American missile defence programme.

He said: "It's a solid propellant missile, you can tell from the efflux [smoke] but they're not showing enough of the tape to show whether it's staging [jettisoning its sections]."

Robert Ellsworth, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defence, said it was "pretty big" but "not a Tomahawk" cruise missile.

He said: "It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine to demonstrate to Asia that we can do that."

US President Barack Obama is presently on tour in Asia and gave a speech in Jakarta, in Indonesia, on Wednesday.

The authorities have examined their radar records to check that no foreign power was behind it. Last week, the Japanese Navy test-fired an American Standard interceptor from one of its Kongo-class guided-missile destroyers off Kauai, in Hawaii, but there were no known plans for another test this week.

Others have speculated that it could be a target which was launched to test anti-missile lasers which are currently being developed and do get trialled in the Pacific.

There have even been those keen to announce it as an alien UFO.

A more down-to-earth - and non-military - explanation was given by John Pike, director of the US-based security analyst firm globalsecurity.org.

He said: "The local station chopped up the video and so it's hard to watch it continuously but at one place you can see it has changed course - rockets don't do that."

He added it was most likely to be a normal aircraft contrail which appears different in the sun: "It's an airplane that is heading toward the camera and the contrail is illuminated by the setting sun."

Others have claimed it could be the work of amateur missile enthusiasts. In 2004, a group called the Civilian Space eXploration Team flew a 21ft rocket with a solid fuel motor to 72 miles high (116km) from a launch site in Nevada.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ories.html
 
I can kind of see this "It's an airplane that is heading toward the camera and the contrail is illuminated by the setting sun."

It also looks amazingly like a missile, I would have thought theres quite a few planes coming into LAX hourly and theres only that 1 contrail in the air, weird.

If it was a display by non americans I can imagine it could quickly escalate into something pretty nasty.
 
The Mail adds:
Perhaps no one had a better view of the alleged rocket than KCBS-TV Channel 2 cameraman Gil Leyvas. He was aboard the station's helicopter shooting footage of sunset over the ocean at 5.15pm when he noticed a spiral-shaped vapor trail and zoomed in to get a better look.

The on-board camera showed a plume twisting up from the horizon and narrowing as it climbed into the sky northwest of Santa Catalina Island, he said.

'Whatever it was, it was spinning up into the sky kind of like a spiral,' he said. 'It was quite a sight to see. It was spectacular.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z14sNM9ddX
Click to expand...
 
http://www.mysteryportals.com/Underwater_UFO_Base_in_S__California.html

Case closed ... :D

I remember seeing a documentary about this when I lived in the US - 'UFO Hunters' or something with lots of apocryphal tales of objects emerging from the ocean off Catalina Island..So..this was obviously a test and THEY are about to start WW3 by sending one of these into a US city provoking a response in which the human race will annihilate itself so THEY can take back the Earth!!! (sound of manaical Grey laughter..)



I think the contrail optical illusion is the most likely explanation...
 
Almost certainly a contrail (or chemtrail, hehe) - I've had first-hand experience of this effect twice, both times around sunset.

First time I was absolutely convinced it was a rocket, until the plane came flying over, and suddenly the whole perspective "shifted" in my mind.
 
As a local, this story is of particular interest to me ATM since it broke yesterday (with speculation abound), and while generally inclined to be "skeptically amused" by this sort of news, my interest was piqued (past the point of resistance) by the sighting a coworker relayed to me involving several additional contrails she's personally seen over the past couple of days, notably two passing over the San Jacinto mountain range and seeminly originating in the Palm Springs area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jacinto_Mountains

We typically have extermely fickle weather here in SoCal at this time of year and the past few weeks have been no different with the weather waffling from gloomy, drizzly weather to brisk clear Autumn skies in the 60's-70's (F) to hazy, blazing days in the 90's (to 100 a few days ago) all within a matter of days. :roll:
If such phenomenon is indeed simply contrails from commercial craft, with all the atmospheric conditions we routinely experience and the proximity of the large Los Angeles International airport, I personally would have expected these contrails to be dissecting the skies, and lingering, with great ubiquity (my uninformed opinion).
Another point of interest is that the official explanation given was that the resultant contrail was caused by the atmospheric conditions making plumes of smoke commonly ejected by commerical planes visible at their normal altitude.. not sure and hoping someone can confirm but do COMMERCIAL airliners typically eject this volume of "smoke" when flying normally?
Anyways, I'm not taking a stance on this one as I'm still surprisingly ill informed given my location (and about the general nature of the so-called contrail phenomenon), but I'd like some clarification regarding the "obvious" explanation provided for these sightings.
 
ghostkissedivory said:
Anyways, I'm not taking a stance on this one as I'm still surprisingly ill informed given my location (and about the general nature of the so-called contrail phenomenon), but I'd like some clarification regarding the "obvious" explanation provided for these sightings.
Click to expand...
Yep, I'm not convinced by the contrail explanation either.

We have the opinion of the photographer on the helicopter - it would be interesting to hear the view of the helicopter pilot.

And the unedited footage would be interesting too.
 
Pentagon believes 'missile' trail was caused by aircraft
The Pentagon has said it is satisfied an aircraft rather than a missile was the source of a vapour trail off Los Angeles this week that sparked fears of a mystery missile launch.
10:30PM GMT 10 Nov 2010

It took the Pentagon nearly two days to reach that conclusion after examining video of the plume, FAA radar tracks, its own missile launch detection systems and canvassing the US government.

"There is no evidence to suggest it was anything other than an aircraft," said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

The vapour trail was videotaped by a news helicopter as it arced into the sky off Los Angeles on Monday evening, giving the appearance of a projectile rapidly moving through the air.

Speculation that it may have been a missile launch intensified on Tuesday after the Pentagon said it was unable to explain the source of the vapour trail.

"The FAA, when they looked at the radar replay for that time period, they went out some distance from the coast, and identified that they had no fast moving unidentified objects in that area at that time.

"They did have commercial airliners in that area. None of those commercial airliners reported anything unusual," he said. "So all of those things point again to the fact that we believe this is an aircraft condensation trail."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... craft.html

Case closed...? ;)
"we believe this is an aircraft condensation trail" seems a bit lame. With all their resources, you'd think they could pin down exactly which plane it was, what in-flight movie was playing, and the colour of the captain's eyes! :twisted:
 
Excellent find, Mr Baltar! That's that then. :p
 
'Mystery' contrail seen from space
21:05 17 November 2010
Maggie McKee, space news editor

The thin white line in this satellite image doesn't look like much, but it was the cause of a lot of confusion and consternation last week when it was attributed to a mysterious missile launch. The image bears out the theory that the contrail was caused by a plane, says a NASA researcher.

Last Monday, a news helicopter flying off the coast of California shot a video showing what appeared to be a missile launch above the Pacific Ocean. Puzzlingly, the Pentagon had no immediate explanation for the observation.

Outside experts pointed out that airplanes can leave contrails that look like missile launches from some angles, and by Wednesday, the Pentagon said a plane was the most likely cause.

The horizontal contrail in this image, taken by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 11, supports that theory, says Patrick Minnis, a contrail expert at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. "While viewing some blogs, I found that the contrail corresponded remarkably well with flight AWE808, which flew from Hawaii to Phoenix," said Minnis in an article on NASA's website.

Indeed, a contrail forecast assembled by David Duda and Rabindra Palikonda, also at Langley, showed that "conditions were 'ripe' for persistent contrails over the Pacific west of Los Angeles" when the mysterious object was seen, the article says.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... m-spa.html
 
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