I've seen the video and I'm not buying the "line of sight, light angle" it was a jet explanation.

Jerry, where were you last evening about sunset?

Randy
www.vernarockets.com

I logged on here as soon as I got home from work to ask the same (okay, similar) question:

I want to know who here has been hording massive amounts of propellent for what surely was the world's best L3 certification attempt?

And, where'd ya get it??

Original Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010...in7036716.shtml

Humerous take from New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/1...st-emailed-24h5

I think the military normally alerts of a test firing so that the California natives won't think the world is coming to an end. That makes me think it really was a jet with an optical illusion making it look that way. However, they claim it was 35 miles out to sea. I'm not sure if they were extrapolating a launch point with that number, or were indicating where the aircraft was when it was videoed.

Seems to me it would be awfully hard to accidentally fire a missile from a silo and especially so from a sub.

__________________
I love sanding.

The jet optical illusion thing holds water for me simply because of the smoke trail. The only "rocket" smoke trails I have seen that shape and color are monopropellant HTP with a crappy cat pack, or sugar rockets, and they both have too low an ISP to go that high even with a big rocket.

The red shiny at the point of origin in the video is a head-fake to rocket, but frankly as a socal resident with my eye to the sky quite often, could easily have been a reflection from the slightly southern orientation of the sun on an eastward bound jet coming from "over the horizon".

The flat denials by DoD and FAA reinforce, as the DoD openly admits when it launches but refuses all details as to what or why.

Jerry

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