The "mystery missile"

The “mystery missile” from November 8th last week is still taking off.  In spite of delayed but reasonable explanations from the Department of Defense, the FAA, NORAD, NASA, and other knowledgeable experts and bloggers, rumors are persisting that a missile was launched off the California coast by an unknown party.  Guessers say ‘it’ was launched by an Asian country’s Navy, or accidentally by the US Navy.  And ‘they’ say it’s not an ordinary missile, that it’s a big one, an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile).  The conspiracy theorists explain that it’s reasonable to suspect that the Chinese or North Korean Navy are behind it, taking advantage of the timing of President Obama being out of the country on an Indian and Asian commerce tour. 

When scientific, factual, and circumstantial evidence don’t all together cast doubt on an ‘official government story’, then one should plausibly acknowledge the possible reality of the matter, no matter how temping or beneficial (even politically) the theory may be.  (I’m speaking to you, Barack Hussein Obama ‘born in Kenya and a secret Muslim’ people.) 

The mystery missile is really a UPS McDonnell Douglass MD-11, flying as UPS902 from Honolulu to Ontario, California (a Los Angeles area airport), and I’ll explain why I am completely convinced of it here, with a lot of help from two very good websites, Liem Bahneman's blog 'Time to Think' and Mick West's contrailscience.com. 

The first few times I saw the pictures and video the TV helicopter shot of the ‘mystery missile’ I thought that there was a chance it was a missile.  My wife would say there was a forty-five minute period when I was convinced of it, too.  ("He can't resist a good conspiracy!")  The supposed exhaust trail was fatter at the bottom, it made a vertically arching path, and the ‘glow’ from the rocket plume was visible at the bottom of the perceived missile, high in the sky.   However, all these appearances are explainable, and they will be taken on one by one. 

We all know that the earth is not only curved, it’s a sphere.  Let’s think about what that means for a moment.  A spherical earth (globe) means that when viewing objects from the ground or the sky, optical illusions are possible.  Things that might appear to be straight from different viewpoints (a road, a coastline, a ridge, a contrail) aren’t actually straight at all, they’re curved around the earth.  The UPS MD-11 appears to be moving away from the viewer, when in fact it’s moving toward the helicopter.  In both of these blogs you can view many pictures, some of even the flight in question itself, which show this phenomenon and tracks of the actual flights, based on GPS and radar data.

The contrail appears to be vertical, but it's an optical illusion.  It's a horizontal contrail curved around the earth, produced by a jet flying eastbound at 37,000 feet above sea level.  Contrailscience overflow website has excellent explanations of this.

By experience, I knew that a sun which has already set on the ground could illuminate an object in the sky, because at altitude the earth’s 'dipping' horizon can be seen a farther distance from an object in the sky than it is on the ground.  Investigating this recently, I found out that the horizon actually drops eight inches for every mile travelled on the surface of the earth.   After crunching the numbers googling websites that means that for a jet at 37,000 feet, the horizon (or where the sun will set and not shine) is 235 miles away, compared to only 55 miles away for a helicopter at 2,000 feet above the ground.   Why is the 'glow' an orange reflection instead of white, you might ask.  Even at altitude the sun, low above the horizon, is still orange, so the reflection it makes off an aircraft will be orange to an observer far below as well.

How did the contrail look fatter at the ‘bottom’ where if it was a jet it should be thinner and dissipating?  It spread out and expanded with time, the most recent portions of the contrail were thinner.  I've read elsewhere that the weather conditions that day over the ocean were perfect for contrails to form and linger for a long time, and that the contrails were less likely to form over land.  Contrailscience has great pictures which show that UPS902 stopped forming contrails as it passed closer to land.  A missile would leave an exhaust trail far into the sky vertically.   The picture below is from there.

Many trained observers said the ‘missile’ appeared to be moving slower than normal, so they surmised that it was an ICBM.  It was slower than normal because it was a subsonic jet moving horizontally, as explained before. 

Some have questioned that if it’s a jet, then why aren’t two contrails visible?  The MD-11 has three engines (one in the tail), which produces three contrails spaced closer together than in a jet with two engines, and because of the vast distance from the camera to the jet, three contrails can’t be made out by the camera or the naked eye. 

Finally, our very capable friends have also found satellite images of the contrail made by UPS902 over the Pacific Ocean as it approached the southern California coastline. 

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was UPS flight 902, an MD-11 flying from Honolulu to Ontario, California.  However, I can certainly understand how tempting it is to suspect it was a missile, after looking at the pictures and video.  Conspiracy theorists, shift your focus to something more plausible, like whether JFK's murder was a conspiracy and who was responsible.  November 22nd will be the 37th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the subject is still worthy of investigating and pondering.

I'd like to send a good round of thanks to Liam Bahneman and Mick West for their very informative and proving blogs on the 'mystery missile'.  Bravo guys!

I love my country.  Thanks for reading my blog, and God Bless you.