The airplane theory seems possible, but I'm very skeptical.

In it's favor, depending on the angle the camera is facing relative to the setting sun, some of the pictures show the trail to be front-lit or at least lit from the right side. A missile plume headed West would be backlit by the setting sun, not frontlit.

Against that theory
1. There is a clear "glow" from the peak of the trail, which looks like a rocket motor. I suppose it's possible this is a reflection from sunlight from underneath, but it definitely does not look that way.
2. The size of the trail immediately behind the tip of the trail appears too wide to be a contrail. Rocket smoke billows outward very rapidly, while contrails expand more slowly.
3. The video being used to say "hey, it's a contrail" by showing the "aircraft" after it is out of the contrail producing zone has a gap between the time it looks like a rocket and the time it looks like an aircraft. The camera isn't even pointed at the "aircraft" in the 2nd part right away. Without the footage between these two moments, it doesn't seem credible that these two parts are filming the same object.
4. If it was a contrail, the pilot/cameraman filming it would have figured it out once the aircraft flew overhead and this never would have been a story. Also, they would have noticed that it was going too slow to be a missile. Unless we are to believe the local CBS station is deliberately causing alarm to get more web hits, it's hard to accept this would have been reported as such if it really was an aircraft.

It is no airplane.

According to CBS Evening News tonight, the Pentagon says that the object was moving too slow to be a missile, and that they think it was either an aircraft or an amateur rocket.

I don't believe either explanaition. Do you?

Not really, but it's better than not having any word from them.

Too many folks want to make an obvious rocket plume into an aircaft contrail.

But they are only disguised as obvious rocket plumes because the reptilian government are worried that Gorilla was exposing on the internet the evil contrails which the freemasons are using for population and mind control on humans.

just ask yubba:yep:

The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a missile. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.


<slipping on sunglasses>

Have you seen this really cool pen I have?

I finally saw the video on the news tonight. My initial impression and gut feeling when viewing it was that of a contrail from an aircraft. The brightness of the object looked to me as if it was reflecting the sun rather than a burn from a rocket motor. Also saw what looked like darker smoke but it was just the shadow of the contrail.

Well, I'm starting to accept the contrail hypothesis.

The FAA says they didn't have any other reports about this. If this was a missile, lots of people would have seen it, pilots in the area especially. The radio would have been going nuts. No other reports mean it only looked this way from the particular spot where the camera was, ergo, contrail of an approaching aircraft.

I'd really like the pilot/cameraman to be interviewed so we can find out why this was reported as a missile. Did these people actually see the launch, or were they doing something else and then looked west and saw a "cloud", already formed, and just assumed the worst? Because it was reported as a missile launch from a specific point in the ocean, I've thought this whole time that the people in that helicopter actually saw the "missile" from a point in time only seconds from when it emerged from the surface, watched it climb, and could see the point on the surface where the smoke trail started. I guess I assumed that they wouldn't make an assumption that would raise a huge alarm. Doom on me.

if it wasn't a contrail, I doubt the government would tell us for fear of starting a panic, or generating an unneeded (or unwanted) international incident.

How could I forget the most important word in journalism: Sensationalism! :doh::damn:

http://www.collider.com/uploads/imag...tin_powers.jpg
OOPS!!