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Pentagon Can't Explain "Missile" Sighting, NORAD Believes It Is Not A Foreign Military Object
A crazy day in the markets closes, and one of the biggest non-market related stories still has no closure. As per the AP, nobody still has any clue what the "missile" sighting was. A suggestion being floated by the Pentagon is that this may have been a "private company." NORAD chimes in: "We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military." In other words, nobody knows nothing.
From AP:
Washington (AP) -- The Pentagon said Tuesday it was trying to determine if a missile was launched Monday off the coast of Southern California and, if so, who might have fired it.
Spokesmen for the Navy, Air Force, and other military organizations said they were looking into a video posted on the CBS News website that shows an object shooting across the sky and leaving a large contrail, or vapor trail, over the Pacific Ocean.
The video was shot by a KCBS helicopter, the station said Tuesday.
"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.
Lapan said that "all indications" are that the Department of Defense was not involved within the mystery object, and that the contrail might have been created by something flown by a private company.
Normally any missile test would require notification so that mariners and pilots could be warned or air space closed, but that may not have been done in this case, Lapan said.
"It does seem implausible, and that's why at this point the operative term is 'unexplained'," he said. "Nobody ... within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is."
Missile tests are common off Southern California. Launches are conducted from vessels and platforms on an ocean range west of Point Mugu.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details.
"We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military," the statement said. "We will provide more information as it becomes available."
NORTHCOM is the U.S. defense command and NORAD is a U.S.-Canadian organization charged with protecting the U.S.
from the threat of missiles or hostile aircraft.
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Here's to hopin' it hits iran! Semper Fi Bitchez!
C'mon guys, it was an optical illusion. Four guys with goatees have already explained that on the national news.
Everyone just calm down. It was merely BP testing their new launching oil rig. An innovative design that's programmed to jettison into orbit at any sign of of a Hallibuton cement truck.
So a couple of crazy dudes with fire crackers in their shoes and underpants warrent full radiating body scanners, but missles are nothing to worry about?
So...what would an SM-3 look like if filmed from 30 miles away?
Can't Explain - the Who, who, who!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uFcPjILC7k
Permanent Vacation - Aerosmith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhWZmTSVhM
Bool Sheet.
"They" know exactly what it was.
Thier just not tellin'.
It would embarrass them.
It's obvious: dummies the Airforce dropped during 1948 Roswell got too close to the Manhatten Project, which slingshotted it over the Philadelphia Experiment area that melted the dummies into a strikingly missile-shaped blob and with a mondo-static-electricity discharge blew them through time and over the west coast into our modern era.
The supposed contrail smoke came from the dummy-radioactive-blob-cum-rocket passing by angry medical-marijuanna users relieving their stress of losing 'the vote' en-masse.
Occam's Razor, no?
Occam's Razor is the favorite tool of the weak minded
A picture can be worth much more than a thousand words, but I'll spare you even a significant fraction of that. This event took place on monday evening. We can tell the view is looking southwest or southwest by south, with the sun setting to the right. The vapor trail must be further west, since the sun has already set on the cloud in the foreground.
Allow me at this point to say I have some knowledge of orbital mechanics. I hold a degree in mechanical/aerospace engineering with a double in astrophysics. I have seen many launches of shuttles and Delta V orbital lift rockets from cape canaveral while in school in FL. I even took a class at the space center taught by astronaut Sam Durrance.
This in no way qualifies me as an expert, but I gladly share the knowledge I have, which may be slightly out of date(class of '06).
The shuttle and delta V are orbital vehicles designed to circle the earth at least one(usually many times). An ICBM or kinetic-kill vehicle are sub-orbital vehicles which are designed to travel very high altitudes, but less than a full earth orbit. Both orbital and sub-orbital vehicles exhibit similarities in their initial trajectories, taking a steep ascent to get past the thickest and highest drag atmosphere, then pitching into the desired arc(orsomething closer to it if tertiary boost stages are involved). If you've seen footage from the shuttle cabin during launch, you'll notice, or rather won't notice the effects of microgravity until this pitch, at which point bam, instant floaty hair-fro's.
The governments claim that "rockets don't make course corrections" is therefore utter nonsense. Please keep in mind that changes in wind speed at higher altitudes may exaggerate apparent changes to pitch.
Let's consider the direction, we've already discussed the vehicle bears a west heading. This is very telling. Shuttles(always) and satellites(almost always) are launched to the east in order to capitalize on the earth's rotation, as any savings to the approximate lift cost of $10/lb are welcome. Retrograde orbits, those with a western component of trajectory, are very rare and extremely expensive. The few examples I know of were very "steep," launching in a heavy north by northwest direction. Again, my knowledge may be outdated.
That said, the trajectory safely rules out an orbital lift vehicle. Let's consider sub-orbital vehicles such as ballistic missiles and their cousin kinetic-kill missiles. Ballistic missiles are launched by land (ICBM's) or by sea (SSBM's). There are cruise missiles that can be air launched, but I hope its obvious why these can be excluded in this case. Ballistic missiles are very tightly controlled, I do not suspect them as candidates due to the multiple levels of launch controls. Also, our first and second strike capabilities are not, to my possibly outdated knowledge, wired for accidental launch of a single missile; then again, we may have actually dropped the whole Mutual Assured Destruction motif.
A kinetic-kill vehicle is a rocket powered bullet. This is used in the missile defense program made famous by Bush, to shoot down an incoming ballistic missile. Many of such tests were done over the Pacific, please recall the incident a few years back where China sent a messgae by shooting down its own satellite over the Pacific and we quickly retorted in kind. My best guess is this was a case of such a weapon being fired, perhaps inadvertently earlier than expected. I hope is was not a glitch in some not too sci-fi automated Skynet type system, but the thought honestly lingers in the back of my mind. It was not a weather balloon.
If we are to believe NORAD didn't even know what happened, the we all deserve lots of money back.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for following, sorry I went long. Hopefully I didn't get too technical. I have more questions than answers, so allow me to close with two unrelated questions of a slightly political nature.
1. How will we ever know how many of our taxes were spent killing people if we don't stop spending tax dollars on killing people?
2. What exactly has the department of defense ever really succeeded in defending us from?
Best Regards;
Boom-Brrap
PS: Almost forgot- silver, bitchez!!
Very informative thank you!
Let's see now... New congress has a mandate to cut the deficit. Gee, I wonder -- should we cut defense spending or social programs? Now we know... it better not be defense because those poor guys and gals have no idea where ICBM's are coming from. Maybe it's undetectable Chinese subs. Glad we got that straightened out.
Are you scared enough to open your wallet some more?
Sorry to disappoint but it was definitely NOT a missile. Just a simple airliner inbound to Phoenix from Hawaii probably. You can clearly see it's an airliner here:
http://www.necn.com/11/09/10/Mysterious-missile-launched-off-Californ/la...
Nothing new, US has been testing silent warplane for almost ten years by now. If you live in Silicon Valley, every few days you can see an airplane flies over silently with long white tail. This time they maybe test a new engine or new fuel, the other factor is angle of camera.
Perhaps it was just one of those "private companies" that "hates us for our freedoms"? Seems like the best course of action is to go to the mall and do your part as Americans by going shopping. Leave this to the government to handle, and move on. You can trust them to do the right thing.
And whatever you do, don't come to absurd conclusions such as this was a warning shot in advance of G20 intended to make it resoundingly clear to U.S. senior officials that if they don't cut the crap with fucking up the global economy with QE they just might find out they're not as immune to foreign military action as they like to think. No, don't think that because it would be completely silly. NORAD has already confirmed that this was NOT a military launch. And they have special technology that makes it possible to know that while still having no idea what it was or who fired it. Really, they do. But it's secret so we can't talk any more about it.
Go back to the mall, Americans. Nothing to see here. Go shopping...
xPat
Wow! That link cleared everything up, eh? One still frame selected late in the video sequence ...
but ... help me with a couple of disconnects, would you?
- while the statements from the government entities have been hypercautious and taken pains to say that it wasn't a threat to the nation - why haven't they just made the statement you have and told everyone that was it? (My guess is with a new House majority in January able to make people testify under oath, no one wanted to offer anything more that a "non-explanatory" explanation.)
- one of the statements provided to assert that there is/was no threat included the information that the object in question was headed to the WEST ... isn't that a really long way to get to Phoenix?
barliman
All missiles shot from around the LA area head to the west. That is where the open ocean is. Silly to shoot to the east. You might hit Pamona.
It kind of looks like Jesus. He's either playing with a yo-yo or throwing a life preserver to Meg Whitman's new housekeeper, I can't quite make it out.
Earlier today I watched this video... Video zoomed in and showed a small(?) plane flying accross the 'comtrail' and gave some perspective on how freaking big the 'comtrail' was. Looked like a little bird scooting across the screen. Not talking about the zoom out with the helicopter over LA. I'm talking about the smoke trail and a small plane crossing in front of it. Here's the deal... The video has been altered since I saw it this afternoon. Someone actually took the time to alter this cnn video hours after it was posted - to cut out the airplane crossing frames. Does anyone know of an unaltered link to a video that shows it? http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/11/10/nr.missile.not.a.plane.cnn?iref=allsearch
Found an unaltered video...
http://www.necn.com/11/09/10/Mysterious-missile-launched-off-Californ/landing_scitech.html?blockID=348833&feedID=4213