Posted on 11/09/2010 3:33:25 PM PST by The Magical Mischief Tour
Military officials remain stumped about the mysterious projectile spotted in the sky off the Southern California coast, but aerospace experts said it appeared to be an errant missile launch.
Pentagon officials are looking into what they have called an "unexplained contrail" after a KCBS news helicopter shot video late Monday of a luminous point hurtling through the sky followed by a long vapor trail.
SNIP
The lack of explanation from the Pentagon makes Caceres believe it may have been a mistake -- perhaps a defense exercise launched by accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Bingo! I believe we have a winner.
It's easy to misinterpret things seen from a great distance, near the horizon. I'm reminded of one of the most convincing UFO films ever shot. It was filmed during the daytime, looking north from Catalina Island. The object was very blurry, but seemed to be "saucer shaped" and was obviously moving far too slowly to be an airplane.
Many years passed, and technology advanced. The film was eventually analyzed using a computer and powerful image processing software. There were hundreds of frames in the film. The computer was able to digitally combine all of the frames, to eliminate most of the atmospheric distortion, and provide much higher resolution.
The result was that you could read the "N" number on the tail of the Cessna. The investigators went one step further and obtained a copy of a flight plan, for that date, time, and aircraft. It was further north (thus further away) than first believed, accounting for the "slow" speed.
San Nicolas Island. It’s about 45 miles west of Santa Catalina. However, it isn’t a U.S. military reserve. That distinction belongs to San Clemente Island, which is about 45 miles southeast of San Nicolas (and about 20 miles southwest of Santa Catalina). They are among the eight islands that make up the Channel Islands, what range from Pt. Conception (about 45 miles west of Santa Barbara) to the northern border of San Diego. :^)
hmmmm..wonder which hacker group penetrated a missile subs’ software?!!!!
If it was an airplane, Los Angeles Center would have known about it. All aircraft squawk a code on transponders so that they can be identified. So look at the centers tapes from that time!
I would make a guess it was from a submarine sold to Iran by the Russians...
Obama and the metrosexual “world community” is going to play with each other’s dicks on the matter until one of us loses a city...
Gates should be fired for this, he was caught playing with his wee wee.
There is absolutely no question we could immediately know if it was a commercial jet aircraft.
Transponders don’t lie.
Haven’t there been reports of enemies off our shore who might have missile capabilities?
Policy Statement on Ballistic Missile Defense
Long range missiles are more difficult to produce, but short and medium range missiles are plentiful. The scenario of a ship-based attack is the easiest for a rogue regime or terrorist organization to accomplish tomorrow-and the most difficult to defend against.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took time to warn against such a scenario in October 2001-one month after September 11.
A short range missile fired a few hundred kilometers offshore would have a flight time of mere minutes.
Therefore a defense must be capable of quick reaction times and the ability to intercept the missile from anywhere an enemy may choose to sail. A multimedia scenario of the ship-launched attack is available on our website, Missilethreat.com.
http://www.missilethreat.com/publications/id.119/pub_detail.asp
why didnt someone track it?
After watching perhaps 50 or more launches from Vandenberg AFB (while working there on base over 10 years) I can tell you that it had all the appearances of a missile launch I suspect the civilian spaceport off Long Beach is being questioned by FBI right now. That is the only organization I would expect to screw up a launch.
Or was it a foreign submarine showing Obama that his Homeland Security Department SUCKS!
Possibly based on a Mark I torpedo that was dropped from a VP-11 PBY patrol aircraft.
Known for built-in inaccuracies, it curved away from its enemy ship target, and struck an enemy ammunition ship in the middle of unloading explosives at a shoreline port near Rabaul (South Pacific). The resulting explosion remains a legend among those islanders.
The PBY pilot received a medal for it.
:-/
The problem with the Contrail Hypothesis is the contrail itself. Being in the aviation industry, often I make it a point to observe aircraft in flight and attempt to identify the aircraft passing overhead. This contrail is all together different that the contrail made by your run of the mill commercial, or general aviation, aircraft.
The volume of vapor left behind this particular vehicle is a great deal larger than any aircraft I have observed in the past. Watch the video again and pay close attention to the light cast upon the vapor trail from the setting sun. One can clearly determine three factors that distinguish this contrail from one left behind by an aircraft. 1) The diameter of the trail is quite a deal larger than one left behind a large aircraft, say a 747-400, 2) The density of the vapor trail is far beyond what is created by a large commercial aircraft, regardless of altitude, and 3) contrails produced by commercial aircraft tend to condense into two separate columns of vapor connected by a faint layer in between created by the trailing turbulence created by the engines.
This is clearly a missile launce, dont be fooled by that Man behind the curtain.
In any case, if a missle was launched erroneously, somebody is in a great deal of trouble.
It's even harder to believe that the Russians or Chinese would have launched near our coast. First, there's no reason for one of their boomers to get that close to us. Second, they would never want to reveal they were there, especially in such a spectacular fashion. An "errant launch", on their part, would likely be fatal for the person responsible.
I agree, that it certainly looks like a missle launch, but I am mindful that unusual circumstances and atmospheric conditions can fool the eye (or video).
It was no contrail. The only contrail I’ve seen that looked remotely that large was generated by a Boeing 767...passing 2000 feet above my head...and even at that distance, was nowhere near this dense.
Fox showed a photo of a similar looking jet contrail taken over the Gulf of Mexico. The DSP satellites will be able to tell without a doubt.
>>>See silentknights post #213 here. Im thinking its case closed.
>>> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2624382/posts?page=213#213
That’s what they want you to think... nothing to see, move along... blah blah blah... Someone is hiding something.
I agree with you. All my missile watching experience except for a couple from Eglin AFB, comes from TV but that does look like a missile, not a jet contrail.
Of course looks can be deceiving and it may in fact be a contrail but if it is, it is really really unusual.
That’s not an airplane. The video shows the relative distance of the entire contrail to the foreground. The entire foreground, including clouds moves relatively consistently in front of the contrail.
The contrail is clearly moving from the horizon line in a direction up and to the right. (sorry for the JFK flashback)
From the video, the only way that an aircraft could have appeared to have produced that trajectory would have been one flying toward and above the helicopter. If this was the case, it would appear to move a different relative velocities as it got closer to the helicopter shooting the video.
It was clearly at a great distance and traveling up and across the field of view.
I’ve seen aircraft appear to do strange things, but this is very straightforward. It clearly looks like a rocket launch.
I’ve also never seen a jet contrail truly come from the earth horizon line, since it takes some altitude to achieve a contrail. They fade out long before they reach the apparent ground.
It’s a common contrail. The object is traveling toward you, not away from you, and since the contrail has a long persistence, it looks like it emanates from the horizon, thus the illusion that it is a missile traveling away from you.
Maybe it was a signal to the chinees...?
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.