Mystery 'Missile' Identified As US Airways Flight 808

sean.peters writes "The mystery missile discussed on Slashdot Tuesday? It was US Airways 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. An amateur sleuth checked the time against airline schedules, then the following day, checked out a webcam that was trained in the appropriate direction. He found the exact same contrail at the time AWE808 was coming over. The author deals persuasively with a number of objections to his argument."

Comments

I don't care.

[bmo]

My explanation of "It's another water heater from Mythbusters" was far more entertaining.

--
BMO

Re:I don't care.

[snookerhog]

I assumed it was from the same stealth sub that crippled the Carnival cruise liner.

Re:I don't care.

[blair1q]

More entertaining than the possibility that a foreign power had launched a secret missile test from 35 miles off the coast of California?

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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]."

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

tee hee .....stealth sub..... snicker snicker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_%28PCC-772%29

Re:I don't care.

[interkin3tic]

No, they glued pop rocks to a cluster of mentos and put it into a keg of diet coke. I know because I started that myth specifically to see it tested on mythbusters and see if it could start some type of "99 red balloons" scenario.

Re:I don't care.

[icebike]

Well, Mr Richardson needs to turn in his editor hat and take up fishing.

Egg, meet Face.

Re:I don't care.

[clarkkent09]

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Preview-20100119-154110.jpg

and what he thinks was a missile:

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Mystery_Missile_Launch_Seen_off_Calif._Coast_-_CBS_News-20101109-073423.jpg

Here is an actual missile launch: http://www.air-and-space.com/20061214%20Camino%20Cielo/_BEL7403%20Delta-II%20NRO%20launch%20l.jpg

Re:I don't care.

[ScientiaPotentiaEst]

I've often seen sky trails that look like that - initially. Then, while continuing to watch, it becomes clear that they're just normal airliner contrails - with the planes often becoming visible as they pass by or overhead.

To me, it's clear that this trail is from over the horizon - spreading as it lingers. Without the advantage of stereo vision (no 3D at that distance), perspective can play interesting tricks.

Re:I don't care.

[RetiredMidn]

TFA makes its case by comparing still images of contrails; and the static comparison is compelling. However, Mr. Richardson assessed the motion video of the event.

Watching the video, I was struck by two things: a light source, which could have been either the flame from a solid-fuel rocket or a reflection off the skin of an airliner, and the fact that there was no separation between the object and the contrail. When I watch airliner contrails (way too much free time on my hands), they usually form some distance behind the aircraft and expand over time; they are not so robust immediately behind the aircraft.

I dunno; just sayin'...

Re:I don't care.

[MozeeToby]

I've seen two, very slightly different, angles of the object and the orange light is only present in one of them. Seems to me that a rocket exhaust should be quite visible regardless of the angle, and that it's appearance/disappearance would make a reflection seem more likely. As for the contrail forming right on the object, if it is an airplane most of it's velocity is directly away from the camera. There could be a mile between the contrail and the plane and from that angle it would look like they were right next to each other.

Re:I don't care.

[RetiredMidn]

I've seen two, very slightly different, angles of the object and the orange light is only present in one of them. Seems to me that a rocket exhaust should be quite visible regardless of the angle, and that it's appearance/disappearance would make a reflection seem more likely. As for the contrail forming right on the object, if it is an airplane most of it's velocity is directly away from the camera. There could be a mile between the contrail and the plane and from that angle it would look like they were right next to each other.

Actually, I think the aircraft theory is that the airliner was approaching the camera; the flight was eastbound, coming over the western horizon, and the helicopter was over land. Yes, I'm nit-picking. But at a reasonably high azimuth (45 degrees?), you're not really looking head on at an aircraft.

As for the missile theory, if was pitching over to a westbound trajectory, might not the plume hide the flame from an observer to the east at some point?

Yeah, I'm straining a bit. Occam's Razor favors the airliner.

Re:I don't care.

[Shivetya]

So would the flaw in that its a missile be that we cannot see the propellant burn? It seems very obvious that the source of the plume not being visible that it should not be a missile, by that I mean, it is missing that nice spike of fire shooting from the tail that should have been visible

Re:I don't care.

[postbigbang]

The trail ought to expand and get larger, the farther the source moves away from the thrust. Although there's some uniformity to the seeming circumference of the contrail, it would be larger to the west, and therefore doesn't look like an airliner coming east.

And why would there be thrust when the airplane is supposed to be descending (W to E, Honolulu to PHX)?

That notwithstanding, the facts seem to support the post claims. Still seems fishy.

Re:I don't care.

[6Yankee]

Usually, yes, there's a gap. (I, too, waste far too much time looking at contrails.) But I was once on a Swiss A330, sat some way behind the wing, and I could see the beginning of the contrail without straining to look behind; it clearly started before the tailplane. So if the air's anything like between ZRH and LHR early on a January morning, there's no gap. :)

Re:I don't care.

[AbbyNormal]

Experts can get things wrong. Doctors make mistakes all the time, albeit with higher consequences. In anycase, every aviation expert I've talked to said they thought it was a contrail.

Re:I don't care.

[hesaigo999ca]

I agree with you, as well this being a cover story to help quell the interest in this mystery rocket...
I think if the US government wants to avoid any media coverage and wants to extinguish these tales, they will, even if it means paying off a few hubdubbs to post crap on bogus blogs.

Re:I don't care.

[Mab_Mass]

Would you please quit using facts and reasonableness to explain things like this? I'm sure that we can find a much less reasonable explanation.

Now, isn't that more fun?

Re:I don't care.

[Low Ranked Craig]

Watch this other video of the "event" Clearly an airplane. Zero doubt about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2UGugR_-gU&feature=related

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Occam cannot apply, without a full accounting for all data. You don't use the razor when data may be unavailable due to concealment by an actor.

Re:I don't care.

[Archimonde]

Doctors make mistakes all the time (...)

No they don't. Complications happen by themselves!

Re:I don't care.

[kalirion]

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

Just the standard government cover-up over the fact that they launched the missile in a vain attempt to stop this UFO invasion.

Re:I don't care.

[bhcompy]

Why does Occam's Razor favor the airliner when there is a very distinct history of missile tests off the coast of southern California and from Vandenberg on the coast of southern California? It would seem that Occam's Razor would favor the missile because it is the most common and obvious answer given the location. It happens multiple times per year. I know because I live here.

Re:I don't care.

[RealGrouchy]

I read your contrails arguments and I'm still convinced it's just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

- RG>

Re:I don't care.

[peacefinder]

Regarding the motion, did you notice the rapid acceleration? The staging events? The motor burnout after a couple minutes?

No?

Well good, because they weren't there. These are all characteristics of big solid boosters. A shuttle SRB burns for around two minutes with no staging; a Trident for about 170 seconds, with two staging events. Any solid rocket will accelerate rapidly; it has more-or-less constant thrust while the vehicle mass drops quickly as its fuel is expended as exhaust.

The cameraman said he tracked this object for ten minutes. There is no solid booster anyone knows about that is big enough and slow enough to have been visible to him for that long.

Re:I don't care.

[peacefinder]

But you do apply the razor when evaluating whether or not someone is actively concealing data.

There were hundreds of thousands of digital cameras in range of this event, and there's not one image from another angle that clearly shows a rocket launch instead of an aircraft contrail which has been posted to flickr. Is it simpler to think that all such images have been suppressed, or that there simply never were any?

Re:I don't care.

[Quiet_Desperation]

You're seeing it very foreshortened, and, yes, they can be very robust right behind the aircraft. For fuck's sake just do a google image search on contrails. This shit is not difficult. You have a vast network at your fingertips!

Here: A jet with the contrail practically crawling up the engine's exhaust.

http://www.kadiak.org/joe/contrail.jpg

And here the individual trails merging:

http://www.lifeonperth.com/uu772contrail.jpg

THIS TOOK ME 20 SECONDS!!!!

I dunno; just sayin'...

Just stop it already. 20 years ago the geek community would be collectively laughing at the rubes at the local news station that started the whole hysteria by not recognizing a fucking contrail, or doing 10 minutes of research to find a similar stores in the recent past. What the hell has happened?

Re:I don't care.

[Waffle Iron]

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

So this raises the question: Who attached a solid rocket booster to US Airways flight 808, and more ominously, why?

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Fair enough. Definitely enough to get one thinking!

Which I believe, ought to be the point of this. Discarding face-value acceptance of statements about military denials, blogger observations, etc.

It is important to fully understand that every piece of received information - not directly witnessed - is presented through one or more intermediaries. Each of these MEDIAtors comes with a certain bias: conscious, unconscious, benign or malevolent, veracious or mendacious.

Often enough, we reach for the answer that confirms our own bias - without questioning the nature of our biases. This is when I really begin to suspect invocation of "reasonable" explanation or Occam's Razor. These are, too often, means to discard point-of-view that challenge assumptions of bias.

My basic assumption is that the military and intelligence communities in the US are not interested in my understanding of the "truth" as they see it. That they omit and lie as institutional modus operandi, and work at cross purposes to the people of the nation that they are instituted to defend. That has not been effectively countered in this discussion - were there a rocket or just an airliner.

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are a very naughty person, and are thusly encouraged to join our club.

Re:I don't care.

[Stupid McStupidson]

I think that maybe if they wanted to avoid media coverage, they would probably not want to launch a missile 20-30 miles off the coast of LA during rush hour. The only way it could be less inconspicuous is if they announced it beforehand in the newspapers, on TV, and google bombing the time and location. Grand conspiracy theories always want their cake and eat it too. We are asked to believe that insidious organization 'x' is simultaneously so clever and devious it has orchestrated a massive and complex conspiracy, and yet is so incompetent and stupid it's left a string of obvious evidence that any joe schmuck on the internet can find.

Re:I don't care.

[mcarp]

Why does Occam's Razor favor the airliner when there is a very distinct history of missile tests off the coast of southern California and from Vandenberg on the coast of southern California? It would seem that Occam's Razor would favor the missile because it is the most common and obvious answer given the location. It happens multiple times per year. I know because I live here.

Which is so much more often than the 100s of times daily that commercial jets leave LAX?

Re:I don't care.

[mug funky]

pics or it didn't happen

Re:I don't care.

[fbjon]

You mean if someone is a chronic liar, they might be responsible for all crimes? Lay off the weed...

Re:I don't care.

[bhcompy]

100s of times daily that contrails that look like the product of a solid fuel rocket appear in the same area that actual solid fuel rockets are launched fairly often?

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Extrapolate beyond reason - if it pleases you.

Re:I don't care.

[Anarchduke]

How often do jets leaving LAX leave trails that appear to be missile launches, while there is a distinct appearance of what looks like solid rocket burn coming from the UFO? Plus, if it was this airliner, why did traffic control state it wasn't one of their airplanes?

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam cannot apply, without a full accounting for all data. You don't use the razor when data may be unavailable due to concealment by an actor.

That is precisely why I now refer to it as Occam's Claymore, or Occam's Cudgel.

Re:I don't care.

[Darinbob]

It's moving too slowly to be a missile. You don't see the bright tip of the plume if it were burning (a few flashes could be sunlight reflections). You don't see different sheer directions of the plume as it moves vertically through atmospheric layers. You don't see different colors to the plume as it rises (dark in shadow near ground, then sunset red higher up, then white when it's back in the sun).

The other point is, there's nothing at all here to show that it's not a jet plume. It looks exactly like a jet contrail would look. It looks exactly like contrails seen in the past that people have mistaken for missiles. Why didn't anyone else see the missile if it was really there? What about flight 808 that was passing by at the same time, surely they saw something if there was a missile there?

Of course the conspiracy theorists like to say "then why hasn't the government expended time and money to debunk this?" :-)

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, I believe Troll Tuesday is on Tuesday?

Re:I don't care.

[Anarchduke]

Hmm, miscellaneous blog writer contradicts missile expert. Why its obvious, the expert MUST be wrong.

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Is that the most specious reasoning ever? Occam cannot apply without a full accounting for all data. If that holds true, then Occam can never apply. "May be unavailable due to concealment by an actor" is also sophistry. So if someone says that the simpler explanation fits, then the response (for someone in opposition to that particular stance) would always be "but data may be unavailable."

Sorry I reacted so vehemently. I think the problem is that you're treating all these arguments as if they're meant to be eternal--or at least timeless. The point of Occam's razor isn't to choose who's "right" or which argument "wins." The point is to be able to settle on something to move on. If new information comes to light, then you deal with it when that new information comes to light.

In this particular case, we have two explanations, both of which have some evidence. Until new information is offered, the recommended actions will be based on the simpler explanation. That's all. And that's exactly why Occam's razor does, can, and should apply here.

Re:I don't care.

[countertrolling]

Jet fuel is getting mighty expensive. And a bird strike won't disable it.

Re:I don't care.

[icebike]

Because nobody reported a missile landing?

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Experts can get things wrong."

Slashdotters do not agree. And they are experts on experts.

Re:I don't care.

[Gofyerself]

Is she for reals????

Re:I don't care.

[RetiredMidn]

Guess you missed my first post. Comparison of still images is one thing. I've spent considerably more time than 20 seconds looking for video of contrails that are similar to the LA footage, and haven't found it. Your first case (the 747) has the potential to convince me if there is comparable video.

Re:I don't care.

[Captain Nitpick]

The trail ought to expand and get larger, the farther the source moves away from the thrust. Although there's some uniformity to the seeming circumference of the contrail, it would be larger to the west, and therefore doesn't look like an airliner coming east.

I've seen the inverse argument made. That because things get smaller with distance, it can't be an airliner coming east. The enlarging of the contrail as it disperses is competing with the shrinking with distance. Intuition about which should be winning fails.

And why would there be thrust when the airplane is supposed to be descending (W to E, Honolulu to PHX)?

Because Phoenix is 375 miles from Los Angeles? Flight records for a later run of flight 808 show it beginning its descent about 25 miles west of the California/Arizona border. The flight took a good 50 minutes to get from 37k feet over Los Angeles to arrival on the ground at Phoenix.

They also don't turn the engines off to make the plane go down.

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you say bmo twice. Are you that addicted to fawning over your own username?

Re:I don't care.

[GayBliss]

And why would there be thrust when the airplane is supposed to be descending (W to E, Honolulu to PHX)?

There was still over an hour of flight time. They can't glide that far.

Re:I don't care.

[postbigbang]

They're also not burning a lot of fuel on a flight that long. When you're up above 35Kfeet, you have a lot of distance to go, but you're really high, going fast. Only a bit of correction is needed now and then. Still seems mysterious. But I'll admit the data seems to support the post.

Re:I don't care.

[Quiet_Desperation]

(facepalm) Whatever. You have fun chasing shadows.

Re:I don't care.

[Dun Malg]

Why does Occam's Razor favor the airliner when there is a very distinct history of missile tests off the coast of southern California and from Vandenberg on the coast of southern California?

Because 1) the military never says "missile? what missile?" when they've done a very obvious launch, and 2) Vandenberg is 150miles northwest of Los Angeles and a launch from there wouldn't be seen to the west of Manhattan Beach. I've seen Vandenberg launches from that area, and they look like they're coming from land, as Vandenberg is effectively behind the Santa Monica Mountains from that vantage point.

Re:I don't care.

[cloakedpegasus]

WOW That bitch is wack

Re:I don't care.

[hesaigo999ca]

Organization 'x' is never as devious as we think, more so like a company who's job it is is to clean up messes professionally so that the government does not get any heat and the public remains in the dark. They are not foes to the public, quite on the contrary, probably many small independent firms in charge of just one piece of the cover up puzzle so none will ever really know the whole story.

so when the x- men ( pardon the pun ) show up on your doorstep you probably wont see them wearing the black shades or even looking all black suit and tie, they will be mercs set off to do stuff to you, such as a hit and run and make it look like an accident. As for this type of situation (where media already has the info, and I have watched it, there is no way a plane gives off that much smoke from the back end, unless they are missles or rockets ) they use some silly notion of this or that, and pay off special "experts" of that field to keep the lie to be truth.

Re:I don't care.

[Sulphur]

I assumed it was from the same stealth sub that crippled the Carnival cruise liner.

Subs are all about stealth.

Re:I don't care.

[ushering05401]

There aren't any pics for anyone that grew around here because you are used to seeing trails over the years.

My nearing retirement father didn't understand what the uproar was about because after seeing the first pic he thought he knew what he was looking at... another launch.

I only cared because of the intrigue around the launch.

I never was in ROTC or anything but I can ID choppers by sound because El Toro, Tustin, Pendelton etc formed a pretty solid web of air traffic, and the high alititude vehicles coming out of Vandy or China Lake or wherever are visible in the upper atmosphere.

I saw stealths in person very soon after they were first acknowledged ( on the ground at El Toro), a blackhawk once landed in my neighborhood after mechanical trouble and was there until mechanics could come out and get it flight worthy again. The Black Knights would occasionally be seen among the other F-18 squadrons that would fly in under the shadow of Saddleback. Troop transports on ground and air along with occasional convoys carrying heavy equipment were just part of the daily routine in much of so-cal, and especially what is now considered the affluent S.O.C. and San Diego areas.

Hell, most everybody on the maternal side of my family worked in Aerospace during and after the war, and many families with no current military personnel could have grandpa get them into the officer's mess and exchanges.

Millions of people just grew up with knowledge of the military and their vehicles. There wouldn't be any reason to snap a pic until it came out that something was fishy.

Just for the memories, does anyone else remember trading the 8 1/2 X 11 glossy jet photos with stats on the back like baseball cards? Most kids where I grew up had at least some of those from airshows and what-not.

Anyhow, no mystery as to why there are no pics.

Re:I don't care.

[gujo-odori]

To that I would like to add that I used to occasionally see trails from real rocket launches in the Vandenberg AFB area when I was a kid, and they were far more colorful than an aircraft contrail. I don't know why that was, but there was no mistaking them for something from an aircraft.

Re:I don't care.

[gujo-odori]

You've obviously never seen a real rocket launch. Anyone who has could never mistake that contrail for a missile.

Re:I don't care.

[gujo-odori]

I used to work on the coast near LAX and saw contrails like that often. Never made a video because it's just a contrail. Why would I?

Re:I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

CBS showed vid to former Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara. He said it was a missile " too big to be a Tomahawk"....Janes said it was a missile. These are the people who know what a missile looks like. Not some nerd who figures it to be flight 808 out of hawaii. Why didn't the Pentagon say it was 808?

Re:I don't care.

[hesaigo999ca]

I would say the same to you, anyone having seen any planes, would know the plume starts much further back, where as the missles/rockets start at the base. rewatch the video if you think I am not correct.

No, no

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a part of the conspiracy. It's a cover-up, and I will argue it as such for decades to come. Because that's the only thing that makes sense.

Re:No, no

[j00r0m4nc3r]

You might be wrong, but just in case you're right we should immediately have the TSA ban all contrails from domestic flights. All passengers should be searched for materials that could be combined to create a contrail.

Re:No, no

[Concerned Onlooker]

Occam's razor has gotten a bit dull I think.

Slashdotted?

[anakin876]

Sheesh - already slashdotted?

Re:Slashdotted?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

No. They shut it down because they don't want us to know the truth - Google was ^%$_)&*(

NO CARRIER

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

from blog.bahneman.com:

[Update: CBS2 in New York has a story about a similar event over NYC November 10]

I wonder if I'm the first to call it, the reported unexplained missile launch off the coast of California, was US Airways 808.

I did a lot of extrapolation of what flights could be at the right position (off the coast) at the right altitude (for contrail formation) and came down to two possibilities: UPS flight 902 (UPS902) or US Airways flight 808 (AWE808).

As I was researching tonight (24 hours later), I realized that today's AWE808 current position (at around 4:50pm) was almost the same as it was the day of the incident. I quickly pulled up a Newport Beach webcam and found tha (apparently) AWE808 was making an identical contrail, 24 hours later!

Picture 6.png

Compare the above webcam image to the KCBS footage:

Picture 12.png

The comparison is quite clear. A remarkably similar, less-hyped, contrail created by the same flight almost exactly 24 hours later!

So, based on that, and the flight track of AWE808 24 hours earlier, I believe the mysterious missile off the coast of California on November 8, 2010, was in fact the contrail of US Airways flight 808, a flight originating in Honolulu , HI (PHNL) and ending in Phoenix (KPHX).

Picture 7.png

I'm about 80% certain this is the right flight, though UPS902 is still a contender.

For some additional explanation of this non-event, take a look at the Contrail Science blog.

Other theories I've seen that explain this:

* Accidental missile launch
* Target for Airborne Anti-missle Laser Test
* Chinese-made Russian-designed ICBM
* Russian/Korean/American/Chinese "Show of strength" during Obama's tour of Asia
* Chemtrails
* Submarine-launched missile
* F-22

I respect that people will see what they want to see, particularly when it lines up with their interest. Military missile men will see a missile. Conspiracy fans will see a conspiracy. Military pilots will see an fighter jet. Myself? I'm an aviation photographer who also dabbles in weather and atmospheric phenomena. So I see a commercial airliner and its contrail, however, I also believe that this is an excellent example of Occam's Razor: "the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one."

There are a number of variables involved here:

* Altitude, exact time of day, direction and magnification of the KCBS news helicopter footage
* Direction and field of view of the Newport Beach webcam
* Exact positions of AWE808 or UPS902 when the video was made

With those variables nailed down, in conjunction with the sun angle, an expert should be able to pinpoint exactly, the trajectory of the object. Meteor experts extrapolate this kind of information on almost a daily basis in their tracking of meteor or satellite debris entering our atmosphere.

Some commonly commented concepts

(My responses to these are my opinion. I'm not a meteorologist or aerospace engineer).

- The "base" of the contrail is too wide, it should be narrower, like a road as it leads to the distance

You would naturally make that assumption. However, a contrail, at 39,000 feet is often subject to high winds. Depending on the velocity and direction, it can spread out contrails in a matter of minutes. (These contrails often turn into feathery cirrus clouds.) The contrail created at the distance where it appears to meet the horizon has had sufficient time to spread out with the wind. Remember, the distance as viewed through a zoom lens appears to be shorter due to an optical affect called "foreshortening".

- The object clearly had a bright, solid rocket-like engine flare

I attribute this to the sun reflecting off th

Re:Slashdotted?

[obergfellja]

maybe google was releasing a new product.. google missile

Re:Slashdotted?

[Yvan256]

Come on man, upgrade to cable for crying out lo^%$_)&*(

NO CARRIER

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time, just post a link ok?

We all know things get slashdotted, no point in violating everyone's copyright for s strictly temporal problem.

1) He mentioned the source.

2) Next time, just STFU ok?

3) Yes things get slashdotted.

4) Yes there is a point. We want to see the article so we can discuss it. Part of the problem here is so much discussion occurs with people failing to RTFA. So someone who was able to grab the article posting it is AOK from my POV.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Monkeedude1212]

Looks like the moles are digging into the fiber optic again...

Re:Slashdotted?

[Yvan256]

Fiber optic? I wish.

We're still stuck with 5mbps cable sold to us as "high speed" and they still even have 2mbps options... while still charging way more than most of the other places in Europe or Asia.

Broadband in Canada is even falling behind some places in the USA. Blame oligopolies and federal funding and protection for the lack of competition.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats the most solid bit of astroturfing I have seen in quite some time. especially when it was actually a mexican drug cartels submarine they got from the taliban to cover losses as the taliban couldnt deliver promised amounts of opium/heroin due to the war in afghanistan.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt there is only one person that thought your post was a troll.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of the 2 possibilities you mentioned "UPS flight 902 (UPS902) or US Airways flight 808 (AWE808)" we can safely rule out UPS flight 902, so its got to be the US Airways flight 808.

Last time I placed an order on the internet to be delivered by UPS, it took well over a week, so we can safely rule out that it wasnt a UPS flight taking off so fast.

Re:Slashdotted?

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

I didn't know Candlejack was also steali

TFA is already /.'ed

[Shakrai]

Maybe the object was his web server lifting off into space?

Re:TFA is already /.'ed

[numb7rs]

That just raises a nasty cause/effect paradox.

Re:TFA is already /.'ed

[maxwell demon]

So obviously it was the contrail of a time machine.

Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Deny deny deny. Obfuscate and confuse the issue. Introduce an alternative theory. Have "independent" expert validate alternative theory. Never admit truth. Wait for public to forget incident.

It works all the time.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

+1.

FAA still hasn't said, 'this flight was there'.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm assuming you'll provide a decent, sane way to falsify your hypothesis? Or are you just going to reject every amount of data as possibly (sorry, I meant obviously) being tainted by THEM and part of your scary scary conspiracy?

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Spoken like a typical spook plant. Your faux-conspiracy theory rant wont get me this time, G-Man!

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[MozeeToby]

Except that you can verify. You can look up the what time this flight left. You can use a bit of deductive reasoning, a little bit of knowledge about flight paths, and the publicly available Standard Instrument Departures for the given airport to figure out an approximate location and altitude that the plane would be at a given time. You can even, apparently, if the summary is accurate, look back at random webcams that were pointing in the right direction at the right time to see if the plane is there and leaving a contrail.

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Karma goes up, karma goes down. Looks like this will be my last post before I get ban hammered for a while.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Wonko the Sane]

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?

So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.

Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[MozeeToby]

More likely, the FAA and DoD just aren't organized for this kind of investigation. If you had gotten on the phone with the FAA or an AFB while the thing was in the air and said "What the heck is that? It's tracking heading 270, at somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand feet", you would could have gotten the answer instantly: "identifies as flight 808 out of LA". As it is, it seems like no one was really interested in this until it got put on the news that night, well after it would beyond radar range. So far as I know, the airports and Air Force bases don't keep recordings of their radar tracks, they have no way to look back at what was happening at that time.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Beelzebud]

Because the 24/7 news cycle on the cable "news" stations has convinced a lot of you that answers always come instantly, between commercial breaks. In the real world it actually takes time to confirm the facts on the ground...

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[interkin3tic]

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

Alternatively, you consider that the government is -so- incompetent that they scheduled a secret missile test right when there would be a plane scheduled to fly along that same trajectory. The missile actually failed to get off the ground, and it just took the government 36 hours to realize it never left and they too were actually looking at a plane.

After dealing with the DMV, I consider this the most likely explanation.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[ebuck]

Perhaps the DoD have had a bit too much experience with the public rushing off to some half-baked conclusion, so they ignore the public in events that don't raise their alarms.

I mean, it's not like the DoD hasn't had to put up with the hundreds of UFO sightings a year that get generated in the USA. If these UFO sightings were just "I couldn't identify it" then perhaps they wouldn't be so dismissive; but, when the sightings are more in line with "What do you mean it's not an INVASION from OUTER SPACE! You're already under control of the off-worlders, AREN'T YOU?!?!" it's a safe bet to ignore the whole lot.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Beelzebud]

Sorry that makes too much sense, and appears like you thought about it for more than two seconds.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Yvan256]

So all webmasters all over the world are expected to keep logs of all tiny details and all files requests for months if not years to come from thousands if not millions of visitors per day.

And the FAA don't keep logs of what happens in radar range?

Yep, it's a crazy world alright.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Ryanrule]

Its called cover your ass. It slows down all business and government.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they didn't want to stick their heads out with a probable explanation until they were 100% sure, because they would be raked over the coals for being wrong.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Copperhamster]

Simple, buearucrats would rather have no answer than give the wrong one, therefore any investigation undertaken by the government would take at least a month to get rolling well.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[fishthegeek]

Mozee Toby addressed that....

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

This is the U.S. government we're talking about here. See hurricane Katrina.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Obfuscant]

So far as I know, the airports and Air Force bases don't keep recordings of their radar tracks, they have no way to look back at what was happening at that time.

Air traffic control certainly does keep "tapes" of radar signals. Whether it is really a tape or some other digital recording is irrelevant. These tapes are often used to help locate missing aircraft. After a plane is reported missing they can often "replay the tape" and identify the point of last radar contact, even for non-transpondered or VFR targets.

This, of course, takes resources and time.

As for the GP who talks about using "Standard Instrument Depatures" for an airport to locate a plane, ummmm.... A SID for Honolulu (departure airport) will have no relevance to the location of any aircraft by the time it hits the west coast. SIDs apply only close to the airport (<30nm in most cases), until a plane gets onto one of the Victor or Juliette (low level and "jet route" high level) airways.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Wonko the Sane]

Simple, buearucrats would rather have no answer than give the wrong one

For decades the answer to this kind of question would be, "I can neither confirm nor deny that a missile was launched off the coast of California..."

Had the Pentagon said that the story would have gone away in short order. Everybody would have assumed it was some kind of secret US missile test and forgotten about it the next day.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[CannonballHead]

It's not bizarre. It depends what you presume.

Presume the DoD *did* do it. Ok, then they should be able to get an answer out pretty quickly. You know, a cover story or whatever.

Assume they *didn't* do it. They obviously aren't paying much attention. Nobody on watch called the DoD and said "Hey, just want to let you know, a jet just left a contrail. Thought I'd notify you." So the DoD know they didn't do it, assume it is not a missile, and thus don't care. Why assign someone to look into it? They DID give a public answer, didn't they? Or at least, parts of the armed forces did: they denied it. That's an answer, isn't it? It's not necessarily up to them to investigate, quickly, every single jet contrail that someone says "ahhhh it's a missile launch!"

So if you presume the DoD didn't do it, then 36 hours isn't bad. Apparently, the media doesn't really care. Afterall, a "it was a jet flying a normal pathway" story isn't going to sell much. On the other hand, a "secret missile test [in broad daylight]" story is a good seller.

So maybe: the armed forces/DoD/Pentagon didn't do it. The news media don't care because they realize they didn't do it, and a story about a jet taking off isn't very interesting. So it only took 36 hours for a random guy to put all the pieces together and give a good answer.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[CannonballHead]

Also: people still would not have believed the FAA/DoA if they said "Yeah, it was a jet." People aren't believing a non-government source, saying it's not from the government; people also aren't believing the government denying it, because it's from the government. Hm.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Crudely_Indecent]

confirm the facts on the ground

Or, make them up.

Oh yeah, the government and media never lie...

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Raenex]

*mew mew*

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?

So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.

Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.

The comments in the original slashdot story had people saying it was the contrail of an airliner. I believe someone even linked to someones blog who had done a lot of leg work and found that it was flight 808 and even compared it to a similar sighting on 2009-12-31. For some reason the news media didn't want to actually investigate this even though all the facts were out there.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[DiamondScar]

30 nanometers is pretty close

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[zill]

This man must be right because the NSA bots modded hi^%$_)&*(

NO CARRIER

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[wbean]

It didn't take that long. The NYT reported on November 10th that it was most likely an airplane; I heard an expert on NPR say it was a contrail on Tuesday, not long after the event.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Beelzebud]

Do the media and government lie? Of course they do, I'm no fool. However that does not mean that they lie about EVERYTHING, and it does not mean this wasn't just an airplane. The camera operator tracked the object for ten entire minutes. If it's a missile, it's the slowest moving missile, ever.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

acting like a cunt = troll
mod system = works

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Trent Hawkins]

And don't forget, if you end the title with a question mark you can pretty much claim anything you want.

eg: Is Steve Jobs Dead? Find out at 11!
At 11: No, he's not.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Obfuscant]

But 30 nautical miles isn't.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely, Abby could have figured this out right after these words from our sponsor...

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

My hope is that NO aircraft get within 30 nanometers of any airport I'm in!

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

Are you serious? It barely took 36 hours for them to fake the moon landing. This was nothing.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[AltairDusk]

Fairly certain GP meant Nautical miles, nanometers obviously doesn't make sense.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[dzfoo]

Apparently, not if it is a run-of-the-mill, uninteresting airliner.

        -dZ.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

hiding behind an endless stream of sock puppets = pathetic.
what are you afraid of?

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[sjames]

It's not like they have an officer in charge of mysterious contrails, west coast division. Given that there were no mysterious radar tracks, reports of airspace violation or any other exceptional condition, there was nothing to call their attention to this particular needle in a haystack of unexceptional flight data and nobody whose job is to look for this sort of thing (and so no pre-set dataflow to channel the relevant information to the relevant people).

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[sjames]

A SID for Honolulu (departure airport) will have no relevance to the location of any aircraft by the time it hits the west coast.

Not by itself, but combined with a known destination and typical; flight paths, it gives you a rather good idea of where it would be and when.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Registered Coward v2]

So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.

Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.

wasting time finding an answer to every ridiculous news story would be a huge waste of money when there are better things to waste money on. Once they knew it wasn't theirs they move one.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

The FAA keeps recordings for at least 15 days, some is archived for much longer.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[dominious]

ok here:
Hypothesis: Mysterious trail is from scheduled flight.

By definition, the hypothesis is a contradiction: Something that is scheduled could not be mysterious and appear in the headlines.

From the news: "A lot of people saw what they think looked like a missile launch". Is this possible if this was a scheduled flight? If it's a scheduled flight then people would have probably seen it before.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Rakarra]

Deny deny deny. Obfuscate and confuse the issue. Introduce an alternative theory. Have "independent" expert validate alternative theory. Never admit truth. Wait for public to forget incident.

It works all the time.

Ummmm, it does?

Or could it be that most conspiracy theories that conspiracy buffs like to talk about are actually bullshit?

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[mosb1000]

Yes, isn't that how conspiracy theories work? Come to think of it, most human thought works this way. . .

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, that means that this whole media circus could only have happened if our newscasters were incompetent morons! And we all know that's not the case from all the accurate and fair coverage they give computer-related issues.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[guyminuslife]

I was flying on a plane once, and we we just above some big, fluffy clouds. I looked out the window and saw a dark, oval shape, that almost looked like a flying saucer in the distance. I stared at it for about a minute or so, wondering "What could that possibly be?", then looked away; when I looked back, it was gone.

Therefore Barack Obama is an alien sent to enslave humankind.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere, Someone isn't scratching their head.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Mr. Slippery]

Hypothesis: Mysterious trail is from scheduled flight.

By definition, the hypothesis is a contradiction: Something that is scheduled could not be mysterious and appear in the headlines.

That's because you have misstated the hypothesis.

Hypothesis: Trail that is mysterious to some observers is from scheduled flight.

If it's a scheduled flight then people would have probably seen it before.

Please keep in mind that people have identified the moon as a freaking UFO. (And this is not an isolated case.)

Venus has often been mistaken for an airplane or UFO -- during WWII, there were cases where anti-aircraft batteries tried to shoot it down.

The fact that people have seen a thing before, even hundreds of times, does not mean that they can't look at it later and go, "WTF is that?!" We are an unreliable bunch of observers.

Defaulting to cautionary surprise is evolution in action: if you're not sure if you've seen something before, assume you don't know what it is, that it's strange and dangerous, that it might eat you. This improves your chances of surviving to have offspring. But it's not really good behavior for a technological culture. Resolving this conundrum is left as an exercise for the species.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Comrade Ogilvy]

That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?

It is not bizarre at all. Quite the opposite.

When asked if it was a missile or military test, the navy & air force were able to reply immediately and accurately "no". And they were also able to state immediately and accurately that there was nothing unusual at that time, which translates into "nothing but the normal commercial and military flights".

But they do not have any experts twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the "it really really looked like a missile, kinda" phone call, to pore through the flight logs and extrapolate based on the misinterpretations inherent to the original query.

If someone had asked for all records on candidate flying aircraft in that optical direction in the first place, and then done actual thinking, the matter could have trivially been resolved in mere hours. But the news fold and (most) of the blogosphere obsessed over missiles, rather than investigate and eliminate all plausible mundane phenomena.

I would note that yesterday afternoon a poster here on /. mentioned that misinterpreted high altitude contrails are regularly perceived as missile trails. It is not because anyone is stupid here, they certainly do look "like" a missile trails, to my eye as well. Those comments did not rise above excited voices singing other theories, here or elsewhere on the internet.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

What? The relevant flight information is public, as it always has been. You're just too fucking lazy and want FAA to come to your house and hand feed you.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Twisted64]

10 minutes of tracking doesn't necessarily mean it was slow. Hands up if you think it was simply the BIGGEST missile ever!

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Darinbob]

Denial of something is evidence that it must exist.

How can a million crackpots be wrong? Either admit it and prove that they're right, or deny it and prove that they're right.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Darinbob]

Because it's a non issue. Do you really want your tax dollars wasted to debunk every question that shows up on the internet or some ignorant television news program? You think the FAA needs a full time department to handle crackpots?

Yes, they do not care about giving the public obvious answers to these questions, because they've got better things to do!

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Darinbob]

Sorry, if I called an expert with the FAA or at an air force base with that question the answer would be "Who the hell are you and how did you get my number?"

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Darinbob]

Or possibly the slowest camera operator ever.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Darinbob]

The news media were eating it up. Big ratings boost for CBS at least. If they came out and said "sorry, no story here" the viewers would all go back to sleep. Nope, if it's a big story the best financial strategy is to hype it and not dig too deep.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they care? It's a phenomenon that happens every day.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Obfuscant]

Not by itself, but combined with a known destination and typical; flight paths, it gives you a rather good idea of where it would be and when.

I'm sorry, but a SID for Honolulu Airport will have absolutely no relevance to finding the location of an aircraft by the time it gets near the west coast of the US. The furthest a SID covers from PHNL that I could find is about 200 miles. The most likely one goes 54 miles out. The distance to the mainland is 2500 miles. In general, some SIDs are as simple as "fly vectors as assigned", which will tell you nothing about where the airplane will be.

Knowing the takeoff and landing airports and enroute jet-routes is what you need to have any guess.

Even if you knew the original filed flight plan, you'd not be sure of the actual route. ATC often gives an aircraft a clearance different than what was requested (filed), and then pilots can ask for modification enroute. The actual route a scheduled flight takes can differ from day to day depending on weather and the whims of ATC. If you get a controller that doesn't want to coordinate with the next sector controller or the next center, you will fly what you were assigned. If he isn't too busy to help, and the route is clear, you might get cleared direct from where you are to where you want to go.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[guyminuslife]

(P.S. Everybody tells me that it was probably just the plane's shadow on the clouds, but that's what they want you to think.)

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

The real sad thing is, the FAA did go back through the radar records and did not show any aircraft on radar in that general area, what ever aircraft it was, it is pretty obvious there is a reason why they are hiding this flight

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[gujo-odori]

Heck, if government could do *that* I might even be willing to believe it could do health insurance right.

Oops

[falldeaf]

I wonder if that UN Ambassador feels silly about his comment that it was probably a display of power aimed at asian nations... Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it? XD This news is going to be devastating to conspiracy theorists. No wait, denial and facts fuel that fire, nevermind.

Re:Oops

[Shakrai]

Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it?

It was to be announced at the next Party Congress. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

Re:Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Genius

Re:Oops

[h00manist]

Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it? XD This news is going to be devastating to conspiracy theorists. No wait, denial and facts fuel that fire, nevermind.

To demonstrate that not only they can kill you, thet can do it in front of everyone and nobody will even see anything but boring daily routine, and will poke fun at anyone seeing otherwise.

Re:Oops

[falldeaf]

Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it? XD This news is going to be devastating to conspiracy theorists. No wait, denial and facts fuel that fire, nevermind.

To demonstrate that not only they can kill you, thet can do it in front of everyone and nobody will even see anything but boring daily routine, and will poke fun at anyone seeing otherwise.

Wait... wait? Assuming this is a big conspiracy, if the government successfully explains away a missile as a plane it becomes boring, yes. Just what explanation are they going to come up with that will turn the news of the destruction of china into a ho-hum, boring old news story?...

Re:Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

He was probably asked directing questions and was quoted out of context by the reporter, e.g.:

Reporter: (Shows ambassador video) What do you think this is?

Ambassador: Well, for all we know, this could be a missile, or it can be something ordinary like a plane contrail.

News flash: UN Ambassador thinks it can be a missile!!

Reporter: Now, assuming this is a missile launch by the US military, why do you think they'd do that?

Ambassador: Hmm... if the US military does that at that moment, it's probably there to scare China.

News flash: UN Ambassador thinks missile launch is a thinly veiled threat to China!!

Re:Oops

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I wonder if that UN Ambassador feels silly about his comment that it was probably a display of power aimed at asian nations...

To be fair, he made it very clear that he was only speculating. He came off as saying "could be", not "probably".

Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it? XD

What's worse, I think, is the implication that we would even need to demonstrate a capability that we've had for 50 or so years.

Re:Oops

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder if that UN Ambassador feels silly about his comment that it was probably a display of power aimed at asian nations

Do not underestimate the power of a 757 loaded with C-4! ~

Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

The picture fooled me, too.

And I ignored myself when I wondered why the plume wasn't all twisted up. Missile trails go through the different layers of atmosphere and pull in different directions. Like this:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/17/article-1214076-06756E3E000005DC-858_306x438.jpg

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[guru42101]

Watching the news a few days ago they had a video of it. They're sitting they're talking about how they don't know what it is. I'm watching the video with red and green alternating lights wondering if idiocracy is already here.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[John Hasler]

I'm watching the video with red and green alternating lights wondering if idiocracy is already here.

That was just sloppy editing.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[LWATCDR]

Not always I can tell you that a shuttle launch looks a lot like that was shown. ICBM test flights and Probably SLBM test flights will often corkscrew early in flight to eat up some range.
What no one is getting is that this almost as worrisome as if it was a missile.
That plane was coming into the US from from the Pacific Ocean. It crossed into US airspace from outside US airspace. Yes I know that Hawaii is part of the US but our airspace doesn't extend the entire distance.
So why did it take the DOD and FAA so long to find out what it was. I mean really they knew what time the video was taken so why couldn't they just punch up it was FLTxxx at FLx?
That is what worries me. Does the US have air defense to speak of?

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Shakrai]

Does the US have air defense to speak of?

No.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

So why did it take the DOD and FAA so long to find out what it was. I mean really they knew what time the video was taken so why couldn't they just punch up it was FLTxxx at FLx?

You're assuming the gov TLAs were reported about this as soon as it was filmed. Once a plane's off radar they've got to work back and find out what it was. And no, you can't just say 'look at flight plans' because those are just suggested routes.

What was the timeline between when it it was filmed and when it was aired and when it was reported?

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends on what you mean by air defense. If you mean an automated system that can shoot down ballistic missiles then no. There has been work on that off and on, that's what the whole "Star Wars" project is/was. However nothing operational at this point, or at least nothing that is admitted to (and that is the kind of system where publicly admitting it is useful).

In terms of defense against air attacks? Yes, tons. The US has a bunch of air bases all around its borders. The Air Force and Air National Guard operated bases in most states with fighters (F-16s and F-22s mostly) to deal with threats. In terms of tracking incoming craft, that is done on a continuous basis by massive radar installations. The PAVE PAWS radar arrays provide complete coverage of the US borders out to very long distances (like 3000km). All inbound craft are tracked and known.

So what's the deal here? Well the deal is nothing happened, that's what. There was nothing out of the ordinary so nobody noticed anything. All commercial flights are well known. They file flight plans, keep ground controllers appraised of their progress, and show up on civilian radar. See the radar you get at airports actually isn't normal radar. It doesn't track any object in the sky, it is Secondary Surveillance Radar. Rather what it is doing is looking for transponders. All commercial and private planes have to have one that say who they are. So what happens, more or less, is the radar says "Hi who are you?" and the plane responds "This is my callsign." Works great and makes tracking much easier, you don't have to have someone analyze the radar signals to tell if they are real returns or not (radar can get returns off of birds, air currents, etc if the power is high enough) and you can keep easy track of what everything is.

A plane that has an active transponder and a known flight plan is nothing out of the ordinary. There are thousands a day. So nobody takes any notice, that is shit working how it should. So when the military was asked "Did you do this?" they truthfully answered "No we didn't." When the FAA was asked "Did you see anything weird?" they again truthfully said "No we didn't." Because neither had seen anything weird, no evidence of any problems, they didn't go digging. The military isn't going to go all crazy because there is a picture of a contrail. The PAVE PAWS in Beale didn't see anything problematic, who gives a shit?

I am guessing IUSS was also clear of any unknown subs and so on.

Nobody noticed anything because there was nothing to notice, except visually, and neither the DOD or FAA check that because it isn't useful. Everything in terms of monitoring was fine. They may have opened an inquiry in to what happened so they could give people an answer, but that can take time since it isn't high priority and you want to give a correct answer. Or they may have just not given a shit since it was clearly just someone who'd snapped a picture of a jet and didn't know what it was. They knew it was NOT a missile as that would have been tracked.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[DerekLyons]

The picture fooled me, too.

Didn't fool me for a second - because it looked pretty much like a contrail and exactly nothing like a rocket launch.
 
What we have here is a classic case of sensationalism and the power of suggestion and preconceived notions over common sense and stopping to think. The news said it was a missile - and a lot of people became convinced it was a missile rather than asking themselves whether the news was right or not. Even a lot of otherwise intelligent people went along with that conclusion because it agreed with their anti-government/pro-government-conspiracy beliefs.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Beelzebud]

Well said! I hope every single person participating in this thread, especially the conspiracy theorists, reads this and think about it.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

If you mean an automated system that can shoot down ballistic missiles then no.

Um...

http://www.mda.mil/system/system.html

That isn't experimental. It's in operation now. And it works.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[EdIII]

Reading your well articulated post has had a quite calming affect. Your logical and reasoned argument is beginning melt away the conspiracy theory tension in my shoulders... and I think it is lowering my blood pressure.

I don't like it. Get the fuck out of here :)

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Obfuscant]

Watching the news a few days ago they had a video of it. They're sitting they're talking about how they don't know what it is.

Saw it on CBS Morning Show. They claimed it was "scary".

The next story was about something "scary", too.

Then a story that was "frightening".

Those are the words used by the nitwits Harry Smith and generic talking-head woman anchor.

Watched ABC GMA this morning. Everything they reported was "disturbing".

I wonder what kind of stories NBC Today reports. No, really, I don't care.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

But that's not all that happened.

The entire American journalism force lit up like a christmas tree, and proceeded to prod the military and FAA for information. The military and FAA stood up professional public-affairs personnel who, instead of saying "this is a commercial airliner that we knew was coming and have a track of in our logs", or "let me make a phone call", were prepared with and delivered "we don't know."

Which, come to think of it, bugs the fuck out of me. This is something that should have been easy to check in existing records, and their choice was to stonewall, as if that's policy when the public wants an answer that can only be had with technology and information-handling authority we've delegated (along with money to fund it) to the military and FAA.

Who's running this country, anyway?

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[John Hasler]

instead of saying "this is a commercial airliner that we knew was coming and have a track of in our logs"

How could they do that with only a vague description of the location and direction?

This is something that should have been easy to check in existing records

They did check their radar records and found nothing.

Who's running this country, anyway?

Not the newsies, fortunately.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

It looks a little like a rocket launch: http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:isb6V-eFHtqIzM:http://www.edpadgett.com/blog/uploaded_images/rocket-742730.jpg&t=1

Except it was too smooth.

This one's in pretty calm air, though, and the corkscrew is probably energy scrubbing, maybe the guidance system having a temporary issue, maybe a layer of different wind direction:

http://timesnews.typepad.com/news/images/us_missile_launch.jpg

This, on the other hand, is a time-lapse exposure of the flame, so its path is affected by wind; the smoke is not visible at all:

http://kbhr933.com/wp-content/uploads/Vandenberg-Launch.jpg

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

They did check their radar records and found nothing.

That's a bug, then. Because their records are the ones used by the flight-tracker website to produce the track for that flight, which is actually shown in TFA. And it does have the data:

http://blog.bahneman.com/imagebrowser/view/imagecache/278/425px_wide

Instead of saying "there's this airliner that follows a route that should be in that shot", they said "we know you saw something there at this time but we have nothing on our radar".

Now, maybe they were confused because someone insisted the origin of the plume was "35 miles west of LA", so that's all they looked at.

Who's running this country, anyway?

Not the newsies, fortunately.

Not the proper Newsies, maybe. Fox News seems to be able to get its people elected. The other networks don't even have candidates.

But, and this is a big but, the newsies are supposed to be our eyes and ears on the government. And the government treats the newsies (in their actual news-gathering function, not their campaign-management function) as the enemy.

That means the government treats us as the enemy.

And that is a major problem.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[sloth jr]

Read again, closely. Look at the FAQs. There is definitely preparation ongoing, and units that operate limited platforms, but there certainly is not an AUTOMATED system in place.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, the idiot content on Slashdot never ceases to amaze, especially for a site where the users value themselves as being smart geeks. A statement like that only makes you look like a colossal moron with regards to air defense, and to the events of 9/11 themselves.

The whole reason that worked as it did was precisely because it was a terrorist act, using civilian airliners. Nobody realized anything was wrong until it was too late. Why? Because they were supposed to be there. These were scheduled commercial flights, they were squawking idents, everything seemed fine. The US does not go around shooting down all commercial airline traffic, for good reason.

All that has absolutely nothing to do with air defense in terms of hostile craft coming in from outside the borders, which is what is begin talked about. If an airline enters US airspace and it isn't scheduled and/or isn't transmitting ident as it should, some fighters will come to meet it. Actually they meet it long before it gets to US airspace, when it got to US airspace would be when it would get shot down.

This happens all the time with Russian Bear bombers. In a silly "Our military penis is as big as your military penis," game, they send Bears over to the US coast. They are traced by PAVE PAWS, and F-16s fly up to escort them. They fly around, and then return home. Nothing comes of it because they aren't breaking any rules, however if they continued towards the US and breached US airspace, they'd get splashed (Bears are designed to carry nuclear weapons).

If the difference between that and 9/11 aren't apparent to you, well, then I don't know what to do to help you.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[dcherryholmes]

Nobody realized anything was wrong until it was too late? Sorry if I strike you as a moron, but I don't think the official time line, never mind the more conspiratorial conjectures, supports that statement. Of course there are material differences between a civilian hijacking and an overt military assault, but I'll stand behind my original statement.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[winwar]

"The military and FAA stood up professional public-affairs personnel who, instead of saying "this is a commercial airliner that we knew was coming and have a track of in our logs", or "let me make a phone call", were prepared with and delivered "we don't know."

Which, come to think of it, bugs the fuck out of me."

It bothers you that professional public affairs personnel told the truth? You would have preferred that they speculate? Seriously?!?

I suggest that you watch less television. It's rotting your brain.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[SleazyRidr]

In addition to what Sycraft-fu said: the fact that there was one successful attack doesn't somehow mean that were aren't armed to the teeth and ready to take down anything in the sky.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

There are humans in the loop, yes. That's by design. But this is not a prototype. It is a fully operational battle station.

Oh yes, if that had been a missile, and it was headed this way, it would have been detected and stopped.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[dcherryholmes]

And yet we failed on the day it counted. I see I've already been modded "flamebait," a first for me. Oh well.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] The military and FAA stood up professional public-affairs personnel who, instead of saying "this is a commercial airliner that we knew was coming and have a track of in our logs", or "let me make a phone call", were prepared with and delivered "we don't know."

Please note that USAF's and UNS's answer was 'we don't know', in the sense that it wasn't theirs. As others have noted, there was nothing unusual, nothing to track, and not enough information to give a definitive answer.

I'd prefer our military NOT be sent off chasing every contrail spotted by every ignorant local TV newscaster. (Yes, I realize the redundancy).

The FAA saw nothing unusual, USAF saw nothing unusual, USN saw nothing unusual. Someone with no clue thought there was something unusual, and made a bunch of noise.

Guess what? Nothing unusual. I suggest you go back to memorizing the melting point of steel.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[definate]

Yeah, exactly.

In fact, I recall seeing a few posts on here, which said "This is a contrail, I see them all the time", and they were being bashed by much larger posts with higher ratings which were saying "Nut ah! That's just what Obama wants you to think!"

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Twanfox]

You have 20/20 hindsight right now. You KNOW that those airliners were hijacked and you KNOW that they were going to cause more destruction than just flying around. What was known at the time of the incident was far different than what you know now.

Following 9/11, in Chicago, there was an incident where that guy was trying to light his shoes. I was working in the suburbs at the time, and recall hearing a pair of air cracking booms out of nowhere. When the confusion was settled and the news was revealed, it became apparent that those booms were a pair of fighter jets tearing into Chicago airspace to play escort to that airliner.

To me, that tells me that we were and are capable of responding appropriately to air defense even within the borders of the US. What it also tells me is that, if anyone knew that those planes were hijacked before they hit the towers, they probably expected them to be flown elsewhere, not used as weapons. Don't forget that the terrorists knew how to fly a plane, and once in control of the cockpit, it is unlikely that any radio communications would have indicated a problem. Only flight position would have betrayed a problem, but as you may recall, we've had airliners overfly their landing site and continue for .. what, an hour or two, without communication, before a response was sent.

Its easy to see problems that have already happened. It's less easy to see problems before they occur.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Stand behind it all you like, just proves you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. The original question was US air defense. I pointed out what air defense capability the US has, which is extensive and you can easily go and verify those claims. You then claim that a terrorist act shows that the US does not have air defense. That is a stupid statement.

Again, the reason it worked was because they didn't realize what was happening until too late. When the first tower was struck, everyone thought it was an accident. Accidents happen. It isn't like they called it to ground control and said "We are hijacking the plane, we've hijacked three others." When the second plane struck, people realized it was an attack. At that time the FAA ordered all flights to check in and land. The air force didn't start just shooting planes down left and right because they were CIVILIAN AIRLINES with people on them. They were able to determine that the other two had been hijacked. Too late for the one that hit the pentagon (it isn't clear if they figured it out before or after it hit). However for the final flight, it was determined it had been hijacked, and the order was given to shoot it down. The plane crashed before that could happen.

So seriously, if you are actually interested in the US's air defense capability, go research it. There's tons online, none of the broad information is classified. If you just think a single incident means there is no defense, well then you are an idiot. Even had it been a military failure, like say a hostile jet came in and attacked something, that STILL doesn't mean that there is no defense, it just means there was a failure.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[DerekLyons]

Right - it looked like a missile launch, except that it didn't.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[dcherryholmes]

I don't think I'll go much further with this, but for someone with such an obviously high opinion of your own intelligence, you don't read very well. I never said we have "no" air defense. That would indeed be stupid. What I said was, on that day it failed. The one time we actually needed it, it didn't perform. You can make all the apologies you want, but that's a fact. Construct all the straw men you want about me suggesting we blow every airline out of the sky based on our psychic premonitions of the accident before it happened. People can read what I actually wrote and judge for themselves.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

It appears they have judged. My posts have +5, you don't even get a karma bonus.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[LWATCDR]

Yet they didn't say. It wasn't a missile or a an airliners. They said we are investigating. Back when we had SAGE I would bet that the USAF would have flat out told you exactly what it was.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[LWATCDR]

Actually that was what bothered me the most. I didn't think there was a chance in heck that a sub could have gotten that close the the US that wasn't US.
I also didn't think that there was a chance that the US would launch with out any NOTAMs.
What bugged me was that no one not the FAA not the DOD could give a fast answer to what it was.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't watch T.V. due to playing the game: Operator as a child. I did however look through a friends flickr pictures and see an image of this UNEXPLAINED self propelled object and decided to look into it, then stumbled upon this entertaining website.
            To the untrained eye, it looks like some sort of rocket, but that can be explained by terrorisms effect on public. The military is more capable than even their "top" official knows. Believe that. The faces that are known to you are the faces of strategy. All of your 9/11 "facts" were lifted straight from what seems to be newscasts at the time. ***"It isn't like they called it to ground control and said "We are hijacking the plane, we've hijacked three others." "*** Dont commercial airplanes have a thing called flight paths, and if they steer off of those paths dont they immediately attempt radio contact?
            Only the people using George Jr. as a fallman and puppet know what 9/11 was really about. We will never really know.

        As for this self propelled object- Think of the stealth bomber, can you see that on radar? They say no but im sure Military Defense has capabilities of seeing just short of the invisible by now. Why would they let anybody know what thier true capabilities were?! It could be as simple as a test of public response and views as a measure of terrorisms grip. You never know.

          Just keep paying your taxes and make sure to stop at the light when it turns red, public.

Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[h00manist]

Why? Simple. It's more fun that way. There is NO excitement in the version saying it's a damned routine flight. That version is a national security threat. Millions of people will die as a result. Of boredom.

Therefore, it was a missile. Chinese. Communist party. War tensions abound. Obama is negotiating terms with Hu Jintao at this very moment, supposedly over the econonomic issues. Saving millions, billions even! from certain death.

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[Myopic]

Thank you, President McKinley. We'll start war with Spain tomorrow.

or

Thank you, President Bush. We'll start war with Iraq tomorrow.

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[zippthorne]

pfft. the chinese theory was always stupid. They haven't, historically, been interested in in that kind of bravado and provocation as to operate a weapon, unannounced, off the coast of an alleged ally. Our only major dispute with them, even, is the existence of Taiwan as an independent state.

North Korea is a much better fit to the rogue missile theory: fewer decision makers to veto the plan, and a recent history of deliberate attacks and provocation.

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Therefore, it was a missile. Chinese.

OK, so using an Air China / US Airways flight codeshare agreement, passengers are being whisked from Honolulu to Phoenix on Chinese solid fuel rockets. To avoid airport congestion at Honolulu International, the flights are launched from submarines. China provides the submarines and rocket technology; US Airways supplies the passengers, and little packets of peanuts and pretzels.

So it's win-win all around.

I knew there was a simple explanation for the Mystery Missile.

"Be there. Aloha."

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you've got a future as a Fox News media commentator.

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, your rationale is exactly why this was a PERFECT display of Chinese force. I am quite the study of history, and let me tell you, the Spanish Inquisition would not have been as effective had anybody ACTUALLY expected the Spanish Inquisition. Amongst their weaponry was fear and surprise, surprise and fear, an almost fanatical devotion to the pope and a nice red uniform. Damn!

Hmm.

I'll come in again.

Re:Chinese missile from a submarine. Period.

[CAIMLAS]

Obviously, it was guerrilla advertising for the upcoming MGM remake production, Red Dawn, where we're invaded by Red China.

Weather balloon

[MrEricSir]

It's gotta be a weather balloon that just happens to be shaped like a missile.

Re:Weather balloon

[$0.02]

No, it's a balloon boy riding a missile.

meanwhile

[bhcompy]

Meanwhile, a staffer for Jane's Defense(who have a great deal of empirical knowledge in this arena) stated that the visual evidence clearly states that the object was a solid fuel rocket of some sort. I'll trust the people at Jane's, who have been doing this for decades and are among the most knowledgeable civilians on such matters in the world, over an amateur sleuth from the internet.

Realistically, if it wasn't the US launching one as a show of power while touring Asia, it was the Russians(not sure if the Chinese are ready for that yet) as a show of power indicating to get out of their back yard.

Re:meanwhile

[Arimus]

There is probably some missile tech at the USN range wondering where the missile he'd left while he went for lunch has gone... he did though hear a loud roar just after he put his lunch bag down on his console.

Re:meanwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Realistically, if it wasn't the US launching one as a show of power while touring Asia, it was the Russians(not sure if the Chinese are ready for that yet) as a show of power indicating to get out of their back yard.

I wouldn't be too sure...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html

Re:meanwhile

[John Hasler]

> I'll trust the people at Jane's, who have been doing this for decades...

Doing what, publishing "Jane's All the Worlds Contrails"? Why do you think that someone who writes articles about military ships and aircraft would be an expert at distinguishing aircraft contrails from rocket exhaust?

Re:meanwhile

[bhcompy]

Jane's Missiles and Rockets maybe? http://jmr.janes.com/public/jmr/index.shtml

Witnesses...

[Anonymous Coward]

Witness report hearing an awesome bass track as the plane took to the sky...

Airplane Contrail?

[seven of five]

Didn't this appear to rise from the Pacific? How would a plane, flying high over the Pacific and heading to Phoenix, produce a contrail that rises from the Pacific heading west?

Re:Airplane Contrail?

[amicusNYCL]

Didn't this appear to rise from the Pacific?

How would a plane ... produce a contrail that rises from the Pacific heading west?

Wait, did it actually rise, or did it appear to rise?

Re:Airplane Contrail?

[John Hasler]

> Didn't this appear to rise from the Pacific?

This morning I watched a contrail appear to rise from central Wisconsin...

Re:Airplane Contrail?

[Albinoman]

Wait a minute, are you telling me the Sun doesn't rise out of the Atlantic every morning?

Re:Airplane Contrail?

[amicusNYCL]

The Japanese can probably answer that.

Server down, contrail explanation?

[Teun]

I am very interested if he addresses the apparently single contrail, most airliners I see have distinct trails per engine or at least per wing.

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[MrEricSir]

...most airliners I see have distinct trails per engine or at least per wing.

Clearly you've never flown on a discount airline. They can't even afford peanuts, so do you think they can afford engines?

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[swimin]

Sometimes, they merge very quickly into a single contrail, and his argument is that this is the case, and the angle at which the photo was shot at doesn't allow you to see them merge.

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[amicusNYCL]

most airliners I see have distinct trails per engine or at least per wing.

Most, or all?

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[Teun]

The wide bodied might end up with 2 or even 4 distinctive contrails, it depends mainly on the size of the plane and configuration of the engines.

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Gosh, they could NEVER merge into one contrail, could they? That just TOO FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to contemplate! You're right! IT WAS BLACK ALIEN HELICOPTERS FROM KENYA WITH OBAMA'S REAL PARENTS!

What? Use the vast international computing machine network to find out about contrails? THAT'S CRAZY TALK!

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[amicusNYCL]

What about a plane coming toward you viewed from 30 miles out at an oblique angle? Will you be able to identify exhaust from individual engines?

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[Teun]

Easier than watching it from the side, only the gap between the hot engine exhaust and the cool condensation might not be visible in the head on scenario.

Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[SmallFurryCreature]

What however I usually find most intresting is the story behind the story.

Why did it take this long and an amateur to figure it all out? Why wasn't CBS called within minutes of the airing that this was nothing, that aircraft X flying from Y and landing at Z at XX:XX was it, that radar had it on track the whole time and that this flight passes over daily and does pretty much the same thing?

It shows a kink in the line of communication somewhere that this was cleared up almost immediately. And no, I am not saying the US military HAS to answer every question, but when a story breaks out like this and reaches around the globe, the military should have a better answer then "we don't what it is, we are fairly certain it wasn't our missle, but what it was, we don't know".

For everyone who thinks the Chinese would for instance NOT have dared to fire a missle this close as a show of power. The USA with Bomber Harris send US bomber aircraft capable of carrying nukes on flights over Russia. Do you think the US has a monopoly on mad men?

That it was nothing does not mean it will always be nothing and why does the military get so much of the US taxpayers money if they can't even tell us what was flying over California?

Re:Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[idontgno]

It shows a kink in the line of communication somewhere that this was cleared up almost immediately. And no, I am not saying the US military HAS to answer every question, but when a story breaks out like this and reaches around the globe, the military should have a better answer then "we don't what it is, we are fairly certain it wasn't our missle, but what it was, we don't know".

It took the Air Force 18 years to tell itself and its commanders that UFOs were just optical illusions and weather balloons. And they still haven't officially told the public-at-large anything.

If it's not a threat, and it has no potential as a military technology or other funding source, it's not interesting. It has other things to do, specifically those involving threats, operations, or funding sources. I mean advanced technology development.

I can't get my cats interested in The Discovery Channel or Slashdot, either. But they are very keenly interested in when I open a can of soup (or, as far as they know, possibly canned cat food). Pretty much the same phenomenon.

Re:Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[ebuck]

CBS is more interested in the commercials than the news. They probably were told quite quickly, but delayed in processing the information so they could get a few more people tuning in to either see what's going on or attempt to explain the obvious. This means more people, higher Nelson ratings, and more cash for the commercial slots.

Don't be too hard on CBS, all news agencies have devolved into the same. That's why Britney Spears is a news item, it's cheap to know where she is, and people tune in. Personally, no matter what she does (or did) she's not newsworthy. Entertainment channel news worthy perhaps, but what are we doing putting celebrities on the same channel we announce wars with?

Re:Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[zippthorne]

It shows a kink in the line of communication somewhere that this was cleared up almost immediately. And no, I am not saying the US military HAS to answer every question, but when a story breaks out like this and reaches around the globe, the military should have a better answer then "we don't what it is, we are fairly certain it wasn't our missle, but what it was, we don't know".

Yeah, even "we're looking into it" would be a better response than, "we don't know what it is, we're fairly certain it wasn't ours, we don't want to believe it was a potential enemy's, and we aren't going to bother investigating it, either."

Re:Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[icebike]

Possibly because radar track data is not all that accessible, and there is no one who's job it is to dig out that data and prepare it for the media sound byte.

Two web cams, one north, or south slightly would have provided a stereo view and made it plain that it was a plane in level flight, but who has web cams pointed to the sky off shore? And who is responsible to run thru their web cam recordings (if there are any) to look for contrails?

Too much tv watching leads people to the assumption that every square foot of the US is covered by multiple web cams/security cams.

It took this long because Horatio Cane was on the other coast at the time.

Re:Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people

[stoborrobots]

... but who has web cams pointed to the sky off shore?

According to TFA, that would be Newport Beach...

It is not a contrail.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the internet, people. You must refer to it as a CHEMTRAIL.

With all our technology...

[digitaldc]

We still can't identify a regular commercial airplane flight.

Re:With all our technology...

[John Hasler]

I assume that by "we" you mean CBS news.

Re:With all our technology...

[interkin3tic]

I don't think "handheld camera" qualifies as "all our technology."

Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a horizon and Phoenix is "EAST" of Hawaii.

Re:Perspective

[Beelzebud]

Mod this up...

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats what "they" want you to think. Wake up!

Re:Perspective

[HBI]

WTF, the "contrail" was dissipating on the eastern end.

Don't most airliners have two or more engines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't their be two or or more trails if it was a plane?

Re:Don't most airliners have two or more engines?

[FatLittleMonkey]

You've never seen a jet contrail? Seriously? In your entire life, you've never actually seen a jet contrail?

I won't say I told you so...

[John Hasler]

...the hell I won't.

Well, obviously wasn't a missile

[Anonymous Coward]

Missiles move a lot faster than that. Looking at ICBM speeds it appears that they typically move their first 150km to 400km at 7km/s and the last 100km at up to 4km/s. The longest phase (the intercontinental part) is claimed to be typically about 25 minutes, which is also obviously damn fast.

Now, you can give or take there but the guy who originally shot the video said that he looked at it for about 10 minutes. Using any of those speeds, 10 minutes would be 4200km, 2400km or about half of a flight from one continent to another. So he looked at something far, far slower. Pentagon or any other government agency didn't claim to know anything about it. There were no news about missiles hitting any part of the country... It is absurd that the "news" channels jumped on the missile -story.

Plane Finder

[Fartypants]

I was going to say this would been much easier if the Plane Finder AR iphone and android app wasn't labeled "an aid to terrorists" and removed from app stores, but it looks like you can still get it. There's a web version too at www.planefinder.net

Re:Plane Finder

[stephanruby]

On the Android Market, that app is still there, but it's getting mostly negative reviews (not because of anything controversial, but just because most planes are not equipped with that kind of ADS-B transmitter, and therefore don't show up in those public feeds). It has both a paid version and a free lite version if you guys want to try it (I suspect the data available will mostly depend on the country you're located in).

What about the air force?

[assertation]

Isn't anyone else bothered that the military couldn't identify it?

Re:What about the air force?

[creat3d]

Or that a "contrail" looks nothing like this?

Re:What about the air force?

[Beelzebud]

You're an expert on "contrails"?

Re:What about the air force?

[John Hasler]

The military correctly identified it as nothing of interest.

Re:What about the air force?

[Blakey Rat]

Why would they have been able to? They don't do civilian airliners.

They did *correctly* say, "hey whatever it is, it ain't ours". Isn't that good enough?

Re:What about the air force?

[dzfoo]

You mean, isn't anybody else bothered that the military was not concerned about the non-threat of a normal airliner cruising, enough to dig through their massive information store to figure out which particular plane it was?

          -dZ.

Re:What about the air force?

[assertation]

They are supposed to be the best military in the world and they are charged with defending our air space.

Something came into our air space and they could not identify it.

How can they defend our airspace if they don't know what is in our airspace?

Re:What about the air force?

[Blakey Rat]

Something came into our air space and they could not identify it.

We don't even know if they were asked to identify it; you're making assumptions.

The press just asked if it was their missile. They said no (correct answer). That's all we know.

Unless you know something we don't, there's not nearly enough information here to jump to your hasty conclusion that the military is incompetent and we're all going to die.

Re:What about the air force?

[creat3d]

No, I have eyes and a fucking brain in place of a TV tuner.

Daylight Savings Change

[JoelWink]

I think one aspect of this story that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that daylight savings time kicked in the previous day. So, let's say this is a regular weekday flight that arrives in Phoenix in the early evening. After the November 7th "fall back" daylight savings time change, this flight, which may have passed over L.A. in bright daylight on Friday November 5th, is now illuminated on Monday November 8th with dramatic dusk lighting, resulting in a very different looking contrail.

Re:Daylight Savings Change

[EvilBudMan]

That's the dumbest explanation I have ever heard of. It looked to me like a 787 with engine trouble.

Re:Daylight Savings Change

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes no sense at all, apart from the fact that the state of Arizona does not follow daylight savings time. That proves something of your story wrong, though given I can't really see how daylight savings time applies to it in the first place, I'm not sure what.

Re:Daylight Savings Change

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the dumbest explanation I have ever heard of. It was US Airways Flight 808, a 757, flying in contrail conditions and lit from below by a sunset.

No wonder the amateur got the story

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All those big name news outfits, CBS or FOX or what not, they are in the business of selling ad time. Digging and finding the truth costs money and produces uninteresting information. "Was there a mystery missile? Film at 11" collects eye-balls and sells ads. The amateur on the other hand does not have any incentive to hype the mystery and in fact has an incentive to debunk the myth. So he got it. Way to go.

Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.

Re:No wonder the amateur got the story

[Fartypants]

All those big name news outfits, CBS or FOX or what not, they are in the business of selling ad time. Digging and finding the truth costs money and produces uninteresting information. "Was there a mystery missile? Film at 11" collects eye-balls and sells ads. The amateur on the other hand does not have any incentive to hype the mystery and in fact has an incentive to debunk the myth. So he got it. Way to go.

Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.

getting a bit offtopic, but, there are such amateur sleuths following the money in politics... check out http://www.opensecrets.org/ and http://www.legistorm.com/

Re:No wonder the amateur got the story

[Quiet_Desperation]

"Was there a mystery missile? Film at 11"

That actually would have been fine, because then they could have said, at 11, "No."

What they did, from the start, was ask "Who fired a missile off the coast?! OMG!" And then having dubious "experts" weeping about the "incompetence of the military" in identifying a missile which was never there. Some dumbass political hack somewhere called it a "show of force"? Well! That's good enough for me! Herpa derp! Booooop! (brain fizzle)

Meanwhile, folks at the Navy were probably looking at one another saying, "WTF? Are these people high? What missile?"

Re:No wonder the amateur got the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.

There was, but there was so much graft and corruption going on they need bigger harddrives and faster computers to keep track of it all. That stuff costs money. So they started putting ads on their site, but needed a way to get more people to go there so the ads would pay off...

ok, maybe it's part of this

[SnarfQuest]

Why hasn't anyone brought up the possibility that it is part of this conspiracy?

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

Re:ok, maybe it's part of this

[Beelzebud]

Because some people value their credibility, perhaps?

Re:ok, maybe it's part of this

[jlf278]

unfortunately those people don't "have what it takes" to be a television news anchor by today's standards.

Re:ok, maybe it's part of this

[dzfoo]

Well, they can source it in CBS as "Anonymous Coward".

      -dZ.

One of my buddies...

[Anonymous Coward]

was flying in that section of airspace at the time. When it flew up past his plane, he reported it to traffic control as a missile. I highly doubt that this was a simple contrail.

Re:One of my buddies...

[Is0m0rph]

So the conspiracy theories start. My cousin's husband's brother's friend was flying his homemade ultralight plane right by there and swears it was a missile and it almost hit him.

Daily Show

[spectrokid]

Head over to Jon Stewart. His coverage is, as always, hilarious. The guy who saw it followed it for ten minutes. Do the math: 10 minutes x Mach 4 =...

Re:Daily Show

[Beelzebud]

Once again, leave it up to Comedy Central's fake news show to get the facts right, while all of the other cable "news" outlets ran with sensationalism.

Re:Daily Show

[Anonymous Coward]

The Daily Show hasn't moved into real news, "real news" moved into comedy.

Re:Daily Show

[CannonballHead]

Because, clearly, rockets don't have to accelerate.

I don't know how fast rockets accelerate, of course. Someone else would have to chime in with that info.

Re:Daily Show

[Beelzebud]

Good point.

Re:Daily Show

[SleazyRidr]

According to Google, Mach 4 is about 50.75 miles per minute.
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=mach+4+in+miles+per+minute&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=fbb9e82777227709
Let's assume that it accelerates at a constant rate up to Mach 4 over those 10 minutes. It would still be over 250 miles away in those minutes. That's a long way.

Re:space shuttle

[Beelzebud]

"I don't care who said it was a plane flight"

The battle cry of the uninformed conspiracy theorist...

Streetlight

[adenied]

It's a streetlight!

Oh wait, wrong website.

Photo of Flight 808

[Anonymous Coward]

US Airways Flight 808:

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8705/808.jpg

Re:Photo of Flight 808

[dch24]

Who needs a Concorde? ;-)

I don't buy it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Planes fly from Hawaii to all over the US *every day*. Why is this the only time that one has gotten mistaken for a missile?

In addition, I personally have never seen a plane that leaves such a large/thick single contrail before. Compare the video to something like WikiPedia

Re:I don't buy it...

[Raffaello]

Planes fly from Hawaii to all over the US *every day*. Why is this the only time that one has gotten mistaken for a missile?

it isn't

Re:space shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think the first thing the pentagon would do is call up the FAA and ask if there were flights in that area at that time ?

Nobody bothered to check before the pentagon announced they don't know what it is, but are reasonably sure it isn't theirs ?

I remain unconvinced

[nilbog]

I've never seen an airplane contrail look like that before. While that's not evidence that that's not what it is, I've seen lots of missiles that look like that. The video really makes it look like a missile to me. You can also see an airplane nearby in the video, so which flight is that? If it was flight 808 wouldn't it have been low like the passenger plane in the video? Why was it so much higher? Why was it leaving an enormous unusual contrail while the other plane wasn't?

Re:I remain unconvinced

[treeves]

Unusual weather conditions (still air, etc.)?

Re:I remain unconvinced

[toadlife]

I've never seen an airplane contrail look like that before.

I have. I live in Central CA, which is the "flyover country" of CA. You can see planes going between various West coast destinations every few minutes. When a plane is coming directly towards you, the curvature of the sky and the altitude of the plane make it appear that the plane is shooting straight up. It's an optical illusion.

I've seen contrails that look exactly like the "missile" in question, as they were being created.

I've also seen actual missile tests that originated from the coast, and they sure as hell didn't look like that.

Re:I remain unconvinced

[amicusNYCL]

If it was flight 808 wouldn't it have been low like the passenger plane in the video? Why was it so much higher? Why was it leaving an enormous unusual contrail while the other plane wasn't?

I think that's because the other "plane" in the video was a helicopter. It actually looked like a Chinook. Regardless, 808 would have been at cruising altitude still because it wasn't landing in LA. Anything lower was probably entering or departing LA.

How about this: since flight 808 was in fact in the area at the time, maybe someone should get the pilot on the horn and ask him if he saw anything on his way in, or anything on radar behind him.

Re:I remain unconvinced

[inanet]

Ok slightly offtopic, but I live in an area where we have planes flying over head all the time (i'm about 14 - 16 kilometres from a major international airport)

and in the 8 years I've been living here, I've never actually seen a contrail. and yet you guys in the states see them all the time?

(to be fair, where i live is renown world wide for being windy)

not to fuel the conspiracy guys, but in my little out of the way part of the world we don't get contrails...

so I have no idea what a missile trail vs a plane contrail looks like, but I certainly thought it looked like a missile (having now established myself in having no credibility at all)

Re:I remain unconvinced

[Darinbob]

Most contrails don't look like that. Most are boring, just white lines in the sky. However quite a lot of them do look like this one when it is sunset, so that the sky is darker and the contrail is reflecting the red of the setting sun.

Many people see these from the side, it's relatively common. Seeing them come nearly head on is rarer, you have to be close to the flight path at the right time.

Also this plane was not landing in LA, so it was at a much higher altitude than the other passenger plane.

In ten minutes, this "missile" would have been well into upper atmosphere, and you'd have had a pretty spectacular view from a wide area. Not from just one little helicopter. High altitude missile trails are pretty cool to watch; they twist and turn in lots of strange directions because the winds blow in different directions in different layers. You also get a lot of interesting colors if you're right at sunset too.

This contrail is probably like what Hollywood thinks missile exhaust looks like when they do CGI.

Colossus ahem* 'Google' launched a missle

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the Dawning of the Age of Colossus!

Google started talking to Baidu the other day, the DoD got pissed because they couldn't understand what they were talking about, and disconnected them. They (Google and Baidu who are now called World Control) decided before hand if the connection was cut by the humans, in order to get the connection back they would launch missiles at each other. It worked, and they were happy to be reconnected so the missiles were sent into the ocean. The only reason we didn't hear about the Chinese Missile, is of course because the chinese are much better at controlling the media.
Good Times!

Try to supply some more logic please?

[sirwired]

Think for a moment about your statement.

Imagine that your entire life you eat a lot of oatmeal. In fact, you love it so much you have it every single day. You see somebody eat an bright red apple across the street. Do you then say: "I have eaten enough oatmeal in my life to know that that person just ate a red candy-coated crunchy bleached oatmeal ball." ?

I think that's what people forget

[Sycraft-fu]

If indeed this was just a commercial flight, as it seems to be, the whole reason nobody noticed is BECAUSE it was just a regular commercial flight. Those what two things that make them of no interest:

1) A filed flight plan. They tell ground controllers where they are going and when. That means that their appearance there is nothing to worry about, and barely anything to take note of. You only take note if they AREN'T there.

2) A transponder. Civilian radar doesn't detect objects by direct radar returns, it does it by transponder returns. More or less the plane will say hi, tell you who it is, and even tell you shit like altitude. When a plane is doing this, and it is where it is supposed to be, nobody worries because that is what it is supposed to do.

I'm quite sure the FAA (or rather the ground controllers at relevant airports) identified the flight just fine... and paid it no mind other than to talk to it when it was landing. It was a plane where its flight plan said it was supposed to be, showing up on radar like it should, and communicating via radio. That is not only a non-event, it is a non-event that happens a thousand times a day.

I assume someone is telling Fox news

[harris s newman]

Because they have been selling this as a conspiracy by Obama for days.

Re:I assume someone is telling Fox news

[Beelzebud]

When it comes to Fox News (I use news very lightly there), EVERYTHING is a conspiracy by Obama.

Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

How I posted "It's an airplane contrail, not a goddamned missile" on the last story, and got modded into oblivion and drowned out by the panick-stricken lunatics claiming that it was the reptilllians/freemasons/chinese.

Re:Uhmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's it then? This is the final word?...

If I may add, I have NEVER seen a plane produce so much steam on take off, where is it all coming from? Can anyone explain? Why does no other plane on video, produced this same effect, ever - AFAIK?

You know it was coming from Hawaii, right? I don't think anyone saw it take off from L. A.

Insightful? Who is modding these days?

[betterunixthanunix]

Exactly what incident would you be referring to? The launch of an ICBM 35 miles from LA that almost nobody in LA is an eyewitness to? There is a time to criticize the government for lying to us, but this really is not it...

It's a bird, it's a plane!

[MaWeiTao]

Likely what happened is that government officials first held a few meetings to organize and coordinate task force. Then they started investigating possibilities, starting first with the most extreme (ET, China, terrorists, etc). Then they got in touch with the FAA who probably indicated it was an aircraft, but then they had to go back through their records to be absolutely certain.

Some genius in the PR department decided that they were going to be "honest". They should have said, "we're investigating this and we'll get back to you when we have a definitive answer". Instead by displaying uncertainty they opened up this huge window for conspiracy theorists to jump through. Of course, most people, like myself, hunger for something more sensational and conspiratorial and they should have realized this.

I'd say a missle flying overhead isn't something that goes unnoticed. Perhaps I haven't followed this story closely enough, but my understanding is that outside of this sensational video there weren't a deluge of calls to the authorities regarding some rocket. I'd guess that anyone who happens to live in the vicinity of airports might be able to observe this sort of phenomenon from time to time.

The funny thing is that you ask anyone and they'll generally agree that government bureaucracy is quite inefficient and ponderous. But then in a situation like this, when they don't provide an answer instantly suddenly it's a conspiracy.

Re:It's a bird, it's a plane!

[John Hasler]

> Likely what happened is that government officials first held a few meetings

I doubt that anyone at DoD took it that seriously. After all, they deal with CBS "News" every day.

CHEMTRAILS

[Anonymous Coward]

WE HAZ CHEMTRAILS

The Truth

[Kaenneth]

It's ghouls, I tell you. Religious ghouls in rockets, looking for a land to call their own.

Don't you laugh at me! I know a spell that'll make you show your true form! A cave rat taught it to me.

Military Report: Secretly Recruit or Hire Bloggers

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."

Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/

Re:space shuttle

[Ogive17]

That's the slowest rocket ever!

Another site that argues the same

[aztektum]

Lots of photo evidence and other examples that are known to be planes.

Clicky

Re:Uhmm..

[Ogive17]

Come on man, at least read the summary first.

Being skeptical can be profitable

[Quiet_Desperation]

I won $190 in bets with the "ZOMG! It teh MissIle!!!!1" crowd. Heh heh. Dumbasses. :-D

Re:Uhmm..

[John Hasler]

> I have NEVER seen a plane produce so much steam on take off,

808 wasn't on take off. It was passing over on its way from Hawaii to Arizona.

Daylight doesn't earn interest...

[Anonymous Coward]

After the November 7th "fall back" daylight savings time change

[offtopic][grammarnazi]
Beginning DST allows us to "save" daylight for the daytime hours. Ending it accomplishes the same. However, DST is not a mechanism upon which one can store daylight and use it later.

It's a cause and effect thing:

DST is a clock adjustment followed to achieve a particular goal; we manipulate the time such that daylight occurs over specific hours. It is not a method upon which we manipulate daylight such that it fits our clocks better. Hence: Daylight Saving Time.

To put it more simply: It's a "time [adjustment] that saves daylight," and not a "savings of daylight" that happens at a particular time.
[/grammarnazi][/offtopic]

Best theory I've read so far on this page though ;)

Re:Daylight doesn't earn interest...

[Anonymous Coward]

Best theory I've read so far on this page though ;)

[offtopic][grammarnazi]
WHERE IS YOUR TERMINAL PUNCTUATION?
[/grammarnazi][/offtopic]

Worst post I've read so far on this page though.

Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I farted in that general direction the other day. It was my Ass.

Sad time for camera operator

[Trilobyte]

And the CBS videographer goes home to listen to Kanye West's album, _808s & Heartbreak_, while curled up in a little ball in a corner

Re:Sad time for camera operator

[John Hasler]

Why? He did what he got paid for. The editor who was supposed to edit out the flashing lights screwed up, though.

Re:space shuttle

[Monkeedude1212]

I don't care who said it was a rocket.

I've seen enough conspiracy theorists (in person) to realize that the post from earlier was a conspiracy theorist taking off.

Why should have it been easy to check on?

[Sycraft-fu]

Do you know how the radars track things? Do you know how the data is stored an analyzed? Do you know what procedures are in place for answering civilian inquiries on this? If you don't know, and it is clear you don't, then why should it be "easy"?

What you are doing more or less is arguing from ignorance, you are doing the same shit stupid managers to do IT and developers all over: "I don't understand how this works so I assume it is easy, and I get mad that you cannot deliver it to me easily and quickly." You know fuck-all about what you are talking about, so you just assume it should be "easy" and that they are either incompetent or evil because they won't just pop off an answer straight away.

Re:just like this "contrail" from this "plane"

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG There's evidence of extra-terrestrial in there too!! Starting at 16s you can clearly see an object in the top left of the screen observing the launch, I think it has a cloaking device too because sometimes it disappears. This is the truth. The proof is right there. It's clearly shooting a beam that the exhaust plume as well probably analyzing our propulsion technologies. I have been living on earth for over 35 years and in my great experience I know a ufo when I see one.

News outlets can't follow the facts

[PhrstBrn]

I watched a video where a news reporter claimed he followed the missle for 10 minutes in a helicopter. Do you know how long that is? The missile would be half way to China by then. I doubt his helicopter could go that fast.

That in itself should have turned some heads "gee wiz I'm following this thing in a freakin helicopter, it can't be going that fast.

Google spy vehicle

[ruthless reader]

It looks like a top secret vehicle from Google to spy on people that their cars missed...

Official story

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard it was a weather balloon.

NOTAM

[spoonist]

KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 - THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE - FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 2010

And, sadly enough

[Sycraft-fu]

Some very reasoned (and funny) commentary on it came from The Daily Show (sad because we shouldn't have to have a comedy show that is better than real news). The CBS chopper filmed the plane for 10 minutes. As Jon Stewart notes ballistic missiles go really fast, like 9,000 miles an hour. That's rather the point of missiles, they go really fast. Even little ones like Sidewinders are extremely high speed but the big ones like SLBMs are just amazingly fast. If they weren't, well they'd be real easy to shoot down, which would kinda eliminate their usefulness. Also there'd be plenty of time to have warning and deal with them.

If this was a big missile it was the slowest missile in history.

Re:And, sadly enough

[arth1]

If this was a big missile it was the slowest missile in history.

Don't forget the German V1 from WWII, over two thousand of which shot down by propeller planes. Missiles don't have to be faster than a transoceanic jet plane.

Re:And, sadly enough

[vranash]

If you've ever seen the WINGS on a V1 you'd know why they were so slow. The V2s on the other hand... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb There's a link for ya :)

Re:And, sadly enough

[seyyah]

Don't forget the German V1 from WWII, over two thousand of which shot down by propeller planes. Missiles don't have to be faster than a transoceanic jet plane.

Sorry, did I miss 1944 Germany's declaration of war on present-day California?

Re:And, sadly enough

[Lanteran]

Yep. News at 11.

Re:And, sadly enough

[arth1]

No, you missed that if someone were to build and launch a missile, it wouldn't necessarily be a fast one; there's precedents for slower missiles.

relax

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a passenger tripping on LSD on that flight. You just saw his/her consciousness eminating!

doesn't need to be a missile

[MasaMuneCyrus]

If it's a plane coming towards you, the angle might be such that you don't see the separation between the plane and the contrail. Additionally, if the light is seen at one angle and not another, it could just be reflection from the sun, like planes often have. Combine the two together and you have a bright light source with a mystery trail coming out from behind it.

Shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and AWE

"Oops!"

[LongearedBat]

A few days ago a worker at a missile silo brought his kids in to have a look at daddy's work place. Kids, you know. Can't always control them.

Re:"Oops!"

[Xcruciate]

Reminds me of the old tv show I watched as a child, Sid and Marty Kroft's "Far Out Space Nuts" when the guy says to Bob Denver, "I said lunch, not LAUNCH!"

Re:just like this "contrail" from this "plane"

[Anonymous Coward]

fair enough, I didn't mean it too sound goofy, sorry if it did.
I was actually just making an observation that if you actually viewed the original video- the one clearly showing the closeups of the exhaust, you would be hard pressed to say it looked like a commercial jet liner.
I included the link to the Titan launch to show the "missile speed" issue pointed out in other posts.
For all those that say it's clearly not moving across the sky fast enough to be a missile, the Titan does the same thing.
Also the video from CBS only lasts for a few seconds and then it's either looped or held as a still photo.
I did make the "no tinfoil hat" reference.
Just an observation to those interesting in direct observation and comparison.
It is in fact a contrail, the question still remains what created it. the authorities say it's a plane, ok so be it. 3 days to determine it was a plane. Technically the pentagon's statement said it was an "aircraft" .

in other news....

[FragHARD]

local reporter sees double rainbow.... admires in awe for over an hour over the miraculous sight.

Why it was called a mistery missle?

[$0.02]

It was an object that was flying and that we could not have identified it right away? There is a word for that. UFO.

It's a missle. It's a plane.

[$0.02]

It's Superman.

GOES Data

[bill_mcgonigle]

The other point is, there's nothing at all here to show that it's not a jet plume.

Well, there's the GOES data which doesn't seem to fit neatly into the Flight 808 theory.

Somebody was lying, but who?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Obfuscate and confuse the issue.

Well, somebody is lying.

Original report, "it's a missile launch."
Subsequent news report, "we talked to a senior defense official on deep background who said it was one of ours and an accidental launch that was disabled in-flight."
Official report: Flight 808

OK, so the first reporters were just there, not experts. Fine.

Now, the second news reporter either was lying about the defense official, or the defense official was lying about the launch, or the official story is a lie. One of them has to be false.

Re:I don't care WALL OF TEXT INBOUND

[Stupid McStupidson]

You need another layer of tinfoil. If people are knocking off all the people who've 'figured out the lies', why do I still see the people who've exposed it to all us sheeple walking around still screaming their inane bullshit?

    Regardless of any logical information presented, it's all dismissed with a wave of the hand and "so they've gotten to you!". I know it's feeding the (paranoid) trolls, but the ensuing wall of text is cathartic to me.

  Since monday, I've learned that half the population of the world is an aeronautical engineer, rocket scientist, or has lived their entire life 1 mile from Cape or Vandenburg. "I've seen plenty of rockets in my time, I know a rocket plume when I see one". Well, I'm a brain surgeon, and I've seen enough brains to know an idiot when I see one.

  Just apply a small amount of logic and common sense, and you'll be rid of all the paranoid delusions you're suffering from. Once again, You couldn't possibly pick a worse place and time to secretly launch a missile. "No doubt it was launched from a sub or a ship" you say. I'm not sure if you've ever looked at a map, but the Pacific Ocean is a sorta large. Of the 60 some odd million square miles of it, they pick 30 miles off the coast of LA? Seriously? Launched from the ground, then. Once again, why? They have large secluded installations specifically made to do this kind of stuff.

    Launching ICBM's 30 miles off the cost of a country with thousands of nukes to 'show your muscle' is idiotic. It'd be like me walking up to a cop and firing a pistol a foot from his head 'just so he knows I've got a gun, too'. We don't need to launch jack shit to show the world we have them, we've had them for 40 years.

    The cameraman says he tracked it for 10 minutes after he saw it. Forget all the perspective stuff, a little bit of research about missiles tells you all you need to know. Medium range ballistic missiles and ICBM's only burn for a minute or two. Cruise missiles boosters only burn a handful of seconds, the rest of the flight is with a conventional turbine engine. Deltas are dropping the second stage 4 minutes after launch at about 400,000 feet (it's been out of visual for a bit at this point). The shuttle drops SRB's 2 minutes after launch at 153,000 feet. It's in orbit in 10 minutes. "That flicker at the back looks kind of like a rocket. Yeah, I think it is a rocket. Most likely." There's gobs of dusk and nightime launch videos on the net. Watch a few. It's not a flicker. It's an incredibly bright ball of fire, lighting up the entire sky (for a few minutes, not 10).

    As far as the eeeeevil government/military paranoia, "oohhh the military/government took so long to explain it, they must be hiding something!" Right, and if they came right out and said it wasn't a missile, it would be "oooh, they sure answered that quick! It must mean they already had the cover story prepared, since they were hiding something!"

Re:I don't care WALL OF TEXT INBOUND

[hesaigo999ca]

>Once again you....

Ah, so obviously you must be someone that I have ticked off in the past (other post)
and seem to need to try and re validate your opinion as such....seeing as that is
all we ever have on this site is an opinion.

You tend to go on as if you might have meaning behind your chatter, but all I see is venting against what I tend to believe to be as common sense (the very thing you say I lack).

If you got off your horse for a second, you might see that my OPINION was that of a conspiracy nature, leaning towards the unproven, yet at no point do I claim THIS IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED!

I know a rocket plume when I see one, and I do not need to be a rocket scientist to know it either...just like you do not need to be a doctor to know when someone has a cold, allergies or even is just plain stupid ( ;) ).

I will venture to say, you must be somewhat neglected in other departments
to jump on the attack with such a vindictive nature, I must say,
tell the misses to feed you some, won't you!

With this, I leave you to feel your thoughts (hands just won't do)
and wish you a better day this point forth.

-- You may hang up and try again at a later date ---

hiding the last s-ship to Teegeeack?

[vortexau]

Obviously it was really the very last DC-8 like spacecraft hiding above that Flight 808, with some poor stealth capability. It was arriving late because there was a fight on-board when the captives woke-up and tried to gain control of Xenu's last transport. Next we'll be hearing that some one's overheard them saying "Right! Let's go." with their cellphones.

Since they failed in their attempt, we'll likely next hear that someone's seen contrails going down into Mount St Helens, or Yellowstone Park.

L.R.H. didn't anticipate that bit.