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So apparently someone loosed a missile off the coast and everyone is saying "Not me". Any chance this is a hoax?

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?secti ... id=7773887

Mystery Missie?

I do like a girl with a bit of mystery about her

Weird one, to say the least. Training exercise just a little too realistic?

Oops!

Doesn't look like a hoax, though this one is a ?

Tin foil hats are blaming China.

Where did it end up coming back to earth?

I'm thinking perhaps an aircraft contrail. Apparently I'm not the only one: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/califo ... tml?hpt=T2

There's a video on this site: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/ ... 6716.shtml
That is no normal aircraft contrail.

Could it be amateur rocket enthusiasts, or would they be required to use designated launch areas/notify relevant agencies beforehand?

Anyone near a P-3 base on the west coast? If it was sub launched and genuinely a surprise you can bet the Orions have dropped enough Sonobuoys that someone could walk from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Well the FAA didn't pick anything up, so who knows.

Well, it wasn't Astute.

Or maybe that's what they want you to think.

Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, which it's been known to do, but during the last couple of seconds of the video, I see red and green flashing lights.

Does it look like this?

View photo on airliners.net 

Tom in NO wrote:Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, which it's been known to do, but during the last couple of seconds of the video, I see red and green flashing lights.

That's what it looks like.

I have a feeling that in a day or two we will find out that someone left the fuel dump open.

mhodgson wrote:Could it be amateur rocket enthusiasts, or would they be required to use designated launch areas/notify relevant agencies beforehand?

I'm friends with one, and yes, they are, at least according to him. I'm not sure about out in the waters, though.

I'm going to vote that it's a contrail off an airliner, not a sub launched missile.

I've seen a number of Trident (and back in the day, Poseidon and Polaris) test launches off Cape Canaveral. Some of them were announced beforehand; some of them afterward.

Those things seriously haul ass when the SRB's kick in. They're out of sight before the contrail has a chance to dissipate as much as it is in the photos of the California event.

Now that I've posted my opinion, they'll probably announce that it was a sub launched ICBM...

There appears to be a flaw in the most recent explanation...

A blogger reckons he may have solved the mystery over the vapor trail spotted off the southern coast of California on Monday.

On his blog "Time to Think," Liem Bahneman on Wednesday pinpointed America West Flight 808 as the likely cause -- backing up an explanation offered by a senior military official to Fox News Channel that the contrail caught on video by a news helicopter “was more likely caused by an airplane than anything else."

Clicky the Linky

OK, this one does NOT look like a condensation trail.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/11/10/ ... e-nyc-sky/

A) Training gone wrong, maybe both times

B) The US gubmint is beginning its wargames scenarios on the American public

C) Trick footage

D) Contrails

E) Aliens getting bolder

F) Enemy of the US getting bolder

G) Nothing at all really, next?

Boris wrote:I've seen a number of Trident (and back in the day, Poseidon and Polaris) test launches off Cape Canaveral. Some of them were announced beforehand; some of them afterward.

Those things seriously haul ass when the SRB's kick in. They're out of sight before the contrail has a chance to dissipate as much as it is in the photos of the California event.

I'm with Boris. Modern, solid-fueled, multi-stage ballistic missiles (SLBMs or ICBMs) are extremely capable with regard to their acceleration abilities immediately after launch; they're not at all like cruise missiles in this respect. They can penetrate a low-lying cloud layer within seconds, and be but a small dot in the distance travelling at supersonic speeds within a minute or two.




(Apologies for the Frog speak)


(Useless trivia: The R-36, or SS-18, is given the Nato reporting name of 'Satan'; the missile has the largest throwweight of any ballistic missile ever put into service, and during the Cold War used to truly scare the pants off America and Britain)

What we saw in the California video does not appear to be hauling ass anywhere near as well as the three genuine ballistic missiles above (even roughly mentally compensating for the fact that it was perhaps 30 miles away):



I think this "negligent discharge" theory is a load of horsehockey. The United States Navy frequently test-fires Trident D-5 SLBMs, though always out in the Atlantic test range (heading south-east from the eastern coast of Florida towards Africa and the equator). Earlier this summer four missiles were launched from USS Maryland. Interestingly, Minuteman III ICBMs, however, are frequently test-fired in the Pacific, usually from Vandenberg AFB in California to Kwajalein atoll. If the DoD really wanted to, I don't see why they couldn't explain this away as being a semi-routine missile test, but using a different platform.

And where the hell did the warheads and their MIRVs go?

One similarity is the appearance of a glowing hot exhaust left behind both the missiles above (for perhaps three or four body lengths of the missile itself), as there also appears to be some glow in the California 'UFO'. It's a constant light, too, rather than an intermittent strobe flash.