Both sites are run by a fellow who explains in clear detail how a jet contrail can look like a rocket plume and has been mistaken for such before. The comments are also quite interesting and instructive. There are legitimate questions asked and then answered by knowledgable commenters. There’s also conspiracy nuts and logic-impaired posters whom the science geeks enjoy shooting down like clay pigeons. This general Mcinerney fellow was fooled and he’s going to be embarrassed when he takes the time to weigh the evidence more thoroughly. Here’s a small sample of the comments from those two sites:
Michael / Nov 10 2010 8:18 pm
I’d like to add to all the evidence above that it was just a jet, because the plume is nothing like a rocket plume to the trained eye. I was a rocket safety inspector for 3 years, have seen countless launches and failures, and have a master’s degree in Astronautical Engineering. Here’s why it’s not a rocket:
It’s too slow (<—biggest reason). There’s no engine flare. There’s no expansion of the plume (as the chamber pressure exceeds the atmospheric pressure more and more during flight). There’s no staging event. There’s no sunset striations across the plume (which would look like this. In the wide shot there’s two contrails (off each wing!) instead of one. The plume at the plane is twirling in different directions (very un-rocket-like). The plume at the plane is twirling too much—that only happens in the case of a motor burn-through, which is a failure mode, meaning it would be seconds from exploding if it were a rocket. The wind-blown plume is all wrong, vertical plumes go through several different wind shear layers, which makes it look very different than what the video shows.
Timo / Nov 10 2010 11:48 pm
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area at the 220′ elevation above the bay- from which I can look north and see all of the take off and approaches from SFO at a distance of 35 miles. I have lived here for 40 years, and I cannot tell you how many times in the fall of the year, when there is a cold air inversion layer formed over the bay in the evening, that it looks like missles are being launched all over. This sight is so common that I am surprised at the controversy. It sure does look like missles, I’ll give you that, but I can’t be the only one who sees it. It did freak one of my friends out though once, she thought the world was ending … What are we collectively so afraid of anyway?
Bob Barker / Nov 10 2010 10:30 pm
Your website contrail-science was created to mislead people. Your physics argument fails. This website here was created by the DoD to, once again, mislead the masses. I’m really surprised that no one here uses common sense. How come the offical response is “we don’t know what it was”, however some non-credential website appears out of the blue which explains everything? How come this website is even being referred by the Media? What kind of strings has one to pull to get over 100,000 traffic hits on merely one hour?! This is all a cover-up. Believe what you want, but remember the US government has ALWAYS lied to us citizens, ALWAYS. Time to leave this POS country and migrate to Europe.
Michael / Nov 11 2010 12:57 am
Do all these people vote? That explains so much in this country
I’ve had quite enough of the, shall we say, uneducated and ignorant people perpetuating the myth that this is a missile launch. It is definitively NOT a missile. Others have pointed out in detail why this is a contrail, but many of you are so mired in your hatred of the government or the military or both, that coupled with your ignorance creates something appalling. I truly fear for the future of this nation when so many are so clearly ignorant and uneducated. All you need is some basic high-school level geometry and possibly some basic physics to know that this could not possibly be a rocket powered missile of any kind. Add in some logic about the circumstances and the fact that this is a contrail becomes crystal clear beyond doubt. There is nothing debatable about it at all, it’s black and white, everything you need to prove this is a contrail is in the video. You don’t even need to see other photos for comparison—there are more than enough visual clues in the video. But it’s OK—You all are entitled to be dumb as stumps, just do us all a favor and keep your genetic material out of the gene pool—based on the level, er, lack of intelligence displayed by most of you, the gene pool is already too shallow.