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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."
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
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
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.
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
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
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.
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'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.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
But 30 nautical miles isn't.
Fairly certain GP meant Nautical miles, nanometers obviously doesn't make sense.
Watch this other video of the "event" Clearly an airplane. Zero doubt about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2UGugR_-gU&feature=related
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
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.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
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.
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.