Pentagon stumped

[Bikpik]

Does this happen a lot in California, that it's not getting a bigger reaction?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...85/?cmpid=rss1

The Pentagon says it's trying to figure out whether a missile was launched off the coast of southern California and who might have launched it.

Officials with the navy, air force, Defence Department and North American Aerospace Defence Command say they are looking into a video posted on the website of Southern California television station KFMB.

The video appears to show a rocket or some other object shooting up into the sky and leaving a large contrail over the Pacific Ocean.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said Tuesday that officials can't confirm that there was a launch and if there was, by whom. He says officials are talking to civilian and defence authorities who control and monitor air space.

“Nobody within the Department of Defence that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from,” Col. Lapan said.
Col. Lapan said that “all indications” are that the Department of Defence was not involved with the mystery object, and that the contrail might have been created by something flown by a private company.

Normally any missile test would require notification so that mariners and pilots could be warned or air space closed, but that may not have been done in this case, Col. Lapan said.

“It does seem implausible, and that's why at this point the operative term is ‘unexplained,’” he said. “Nobody ... within the Department of Defence that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is.”

Missile tests are common off Southern California. Launches are conducted from vessels and platforms on an ocean range west of Point Mugu.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details.

“We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military,” the statement said. “We will provide more information as it becomes available.”

NORTHCOM is the U.S. defence command and NORAD is a U.S.-Canadian organization charged with protecting the U.S. from the threat of missiles or hostile aircraft.

[BerenTebogo]

Are we sure it was a missile and not large-scale amateur rocketry?

[Jaybar]

First thing that came to mind was October Sky.

[Alleya]

More proof that Obama refuses to protect us from terrorists.

[Murdock]

i heard there is a video.

[Cephius]

They're saying it's "likely an airplane, not a missle" who buys that one? Anyone missing a town or city somewhere?

[Surealistic]

havent seen the video, BUT, since i now work in visual effects (not as an artist though), and the fact that half the state of california isnt freaking the fuck out, i call shenanigans, that is the exact thing that we do at my work

[Qalbert]

after prop 19 didn't pass a bunch of stoners were like fuck this we're out

[chiyio]

Read a pretty large thread on /. about this. It was a news helicopter that got the original footage. There's also this http://www.sinecreations.com/GOES.gif

Apparently that's the contrail. No clue what that footage is from though, satellite I guess?

[Effluo]

The interwebs are abuzz about this one. No one seems to know what it is exactly. Of course, I'm sure they know, they're just keeping it to themselves. I would be surprised if something like this happened and "stumped" the Pentagon.

[Stiker]

Anyone want to take bets on whether or not North Korea exists in a few hours?

[chiyio]

Interesting article here. http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/arc...-aint-no-thing sounds likely it was just a jet contrail from a weird angle.

[Psion]

Call me crazy, but the images of the video look absolutely nothing like a jet contrail, and it looks like it's going at a steep angle to boot, like a missile would. <.< If the footage we have of it is untampered, I'd say that it's just what it looks like, a missile.

[Devia]

I saw this event. It was no jet. In fact, it looked just like the missile launches that frequently occur at Vandenburg AFB, about 90 minutes north of Los Angeles. I understand that commercial air traffic was rerouted out of the area too.

[Mohoss]

Call me crazy, but the images of the video look absolutely nothing like a jet contrail, and it looks like it's going at a steep angle to boot, like a missile wood. <.< If the footage we have of it is untampered, I'd say that it's just what it looks like, a missile.

wood

wood

wood

all i saw

[Kerberoz]

Are we sure it was a missile and not large-scale amateur rocketry?

This... could easily be someone launching a big-ass homemade rocket, for whatever purpose, without notice, then realizing that they'd be in trouble if they came forward and admitted it.

[Flarega]

I think I saw the satellite launch they were talking about in the video, on a slightly unrelated note. Was pretty cool.

[alexisamonster]

iron man is real

[GentaiShinigami]

iron man is real

Quite obviously it was this guy. Though he seems to be trying to become Iron Man...



Edit: Derp, OK, thanks Qual I'm still not caught up with the new boards it seems.

[Baelorn]

This guy on Reddit seems to know what's up(http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/c...oast/c14zt3d):

Vandenberg routinely launches Minuteman IIIs at Kwajalein to test them - maybe 4-6 per year. That's most assuredly their track.

Their rough guesstimate as to launch site is a little north of [1] San Nicolas, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, [2] a mutherfucking missile launch site.

San Nicholas is, not to put too fine a point on it, a detachment of 200 or more airmen managed by [3] the 30th space wing.

If you read between the lines, CBS asked the Navy if they launched anything and the Navy said "no" (because San Nicholas and the 30th space wing are Air Force territory). Then they asked Vandenberg if they launched anything and Vandenberg said "we haven't launched anything from Vandenberg since Friday" (because they launched something from San Nicholas).2

Which is kind of exciting in its own right - Vandenberg doesn't give the first shit who shows up to watch their launches, they've got mutherfucking bleachers set up1,4. The only reason I wasn't at the COSMO-Skymed 4 launch on Friday is it was supposed to be the COSMO-Skymed 4 launch last Sunday and they delayed that launch four separate times.

I disagree with the ICBM-submarine theory because sub-launched missiles are tiny3. That rocket looked to be at least a [4] Delta II or possibly a [5] Minotaur IV, both of which are too big for submarines5.

EDIT 1: For the people who want to go to launches, it's every bit as dope as it could possibly be. The bleachers are at SLC-2 (Slick 2), also known as "north base." The big stuff, such as Slick 6 which was installed for super-secret space shuttle launches but never used, are at "south base" which is where the Delta IV Heavy stuff tends to go up from (which usually means big NRO launches).

[6] This is what a dawn launch looks like at SLC-2 . I took this shot of the WISE launch last year - we actually were out there with a stereo mic and a 702T6 along with a Redcam and a phatty angeneux lens and then were just too blown away to get good footage. The cool thing is these concrete bleachers are tied in to the PA system, so you get to listen to shit as it goes down. [7] here's a Google Maps link to the bleachers and here's one to [8] SLC-2. Here's [9] Slick 6; as you can tell, it's a hike.

The cool thing about Vandenberg is you can call them up and say "I wanna see a launch" and you talk to a nice girl named Jenny who doesn't really give a shit and is really friendly. She'll give you directions to get there that are wrong, and she'll tell you that the morning ones look the coolest and that you can't really see the Slick 6 launches from anywhere that well. But you drive up there (from LA for me) and you hang out and things are really damn impressive and then you go get a meal (either breakfast or dinner) in Santa Barbara and it's awesome. Apparently they're due a new base commander in a few months and things may change, but in the meantime they're perfectly happy having you drive on base and watching stuff.

For those interested in this, [10] get on Brian Webb's email list to find out what is going up and when. It was kinda funny - the window to get Cosmo-Skymed 4 into the sky was 6 seconds wide, so every time they had the slightest burp they had to push a day. The Minuteman III launches, on the other hand, are so casual you get the sense that they're like "you wanna push the button?" "lemme finish my burger first" (I'm sure it's more stringent than that, but you know what I mean). So you never really know what you're gonna get. Particularly as the marine layer can come in fierce out by Vandenberg which means you may see a big bright thing for 4 seconds and then it's above the cloud layer and invisible in everything but infrared.

EDIT 2: Speaking of Brian Webb, he had this to say as of ten minutes ago on the aforementioned email list:

MYSTERY LAUNCH

This morning I have been hearing reports of a mystery missile launch last night off of the southern California Coast. One account of the launch is posted at:

[11] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/...n7036716.shtml

Missile launches off of the southern California coast are not really that unusual. They have happened before from San Nicolas Island and from ships and submarines at sea.

As a matter of fact, the waters off of southern California contain an established range for testing and evaluating missiles, weapons systems, and so on.

EDIT 3: Perhaps "tiny" is the wrong word to use for anything capable of suborbital flight. A trident, however, is tiny when you compare it to, say, a Delta IV Heavy.

EDIT 4: [12] selects from my last photo safari to Vandenberg. I advertised in /r/spacefleet to see if anybody wanted to come up to see, but nobody did. Perhaps because there's like 300 people in that entire subreddit. Might be a fun meetup for next time, though, presuming people don't mind the likelihood that launches will scrub.

EDIT 5: This is all purest speculation on my part, and nobody had linked to [13] this at the time. I'm not going to stick to my guns on something based on educated guesses. I have no basis to argue that it was a San Nicolas launch rather than a sea launch because frankly, I've never been the slightest bit involved in either. The whole point of this statement was to diffuse the "ZOMG NORTH KOREANZ!!!!!!one" sentiment that tends to appear before information becomes common.

EDIT 6: [14] Now with audio goodness

HAH! [15] Just a weather balloon, folks, or perhaps swamp gas.

Seriously, though. I didn't see it, I've only seen this stupid report that the helicopter shot (5 will get you 10 this wouldn't have been news if they didn't have the footage, and if they had done a little vetting and fact checking before running the footage the explanations would be a lot more pedestrian). The sky was gorgeous yesterday about 5 but yesterday about 5 I was in the Trader Joe's parking lot fighting with an idiot line producer on the phone so I missed it (yet another reason to be pissed off at the bitch). Will it turn out to be something pedestrian and uninteresting? Probably. But here's another wild and unsupported theory just for fun:

This is [16] Slick 3 at Vandenberg. SLC-3 is big enough for an [17] Atlas 5, which is the only reason I mention it. Here's the airstrip at [18] San Nicolas Island at the same scale - you'll note there does not appear to be anything the size of SLC-3 there, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be. Remember, a [19] Topol M can be launched from a fucking truck (although it's about 1/7th the weight of an Atlas V) so throwing together a launchpad between Google Earth satellite passes isn't unheard of.

I'm focusing on the Atlas 5 because it's the launch vehicle for the [20] X-37, most definitely the most spooky-secret thing the US has (publicly) in the sky. The last time they launched it [21] the world flipped out and lost track of it for a while, but [22] those pesky fuckers at SEESAT-L found it [23] anyway.

By launching the X-37 by surprise, letting people get all flummoxed about WTF that was, and then letting the thing settle into an orbit while waiting a day or two to say "oh yeah, our bad, that was just the X-37" there's fewer and fewer chances for the Molczan posse to find it. I've waxed [24] tinfoil hat about the X-37 [25] before.