Mystery missile an airplane?

A couple of days ago someone caught what appeared to be a missile launching just off the California coast. Everyone has been speculating about it, especially since the military, the Pentagon and anyone who should know what it is denies responsibility, or admits any knowledge of the missile. They're currently inventorying their missiles to ensure it wasn't one of theirs.

Now they're saying that it's probably an optical illusion, that it's an airplane. Could be. I only know what I've read. I think it's weird to say the least. If it's an airplane, why with all the airplanes hasn't anyone caught something like this before? It would seem it would be a fairly common occurrence. I'd "assume" that someone who was flying at that time might have come forth and said, 'oh, that's me'. Or, if that's a regular flight path that it the next day or an hour later or the next morning someone would see another airplane flying that route.

I wonder if someone is going to try and recreate the 'illusion'? I did see a side-by-side photo of the so-called missile contrail and a jet plane contrail. The looked very similar. But then I go back to wondering why they haven't checked flight paths and figured out that an airplane flew that route at the time the video was made...

I have a feeling this is one that's going to be fodder for discussion for a select few for quite some time.

There is going to be a contingency who'll think it's something ominous like an alien spaceship. Or we'll find out it's something benign like a private company is experimenting with missiles (although that avenue has been explored already per the articles I scanned this morning). People are already wondering if it's a foreign missile... I would guess there's speculation also about a foreign stealth submarine firing off a missile just to get our goat.

The words 'government cover-up' will be attached to the story soon, if not already by some.

Who knows? In today's fickle news cycle this is already old news.

Here's a link to the video of the missile / airplane. I was going to embed the video but for some reason it's not showing up when I post the code. http://www.cbs8.com/global/category.asp?c=155799&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=149659&topVideoCatNoB=155712&topVideoCatNoC=155713&topVideoCatNoD=155710&topVideoCatNoE=155711&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=5276101&flvUri=&partnerclipid=

If for some reason that doesn't work, here's a link to a story that includes the video: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/experts-unexplained-missile-may-just-be-a-jet-plane/

And, here are a few more articles:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/09/mystery-solved-missile-launch-jet-contrail/

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/mystery-missile-was-probably-an-aircraft-government-says.html