Early this morning I was driving South through Northern Kansas on my way back to KCMO (around 7:45am in the morning), and I saw a aircraft contrail travelling moderately fast, heading almost vertically. I took a few photos on my junky flipphone - pardon the blurriness.

The "rocket" was almost exactly East of where I was (driving south on 81, just a mile or two above where 24 intersects with it).

The above two photos are taken about a minute and a half apart, and about a mile's difference in angle, yet there is a fairly extreme visual change in the angle of the contrail, making it seem exceptionally close. Part of the change in angle is simply me holding the camera/phone wonkily, though, but that can't explain that drastic a difference.

A) Does this look like a rocket launch? What kind of rocket (i.e. is it a space shuttle or military missile)?

B) Where would it be launching from? It seemed relatively close, but I'm unaware of any space-related launch locations in Kansas. There are at least two fairly large military bases in that direction; Fort Leavenworth (145 miles straight east) and Fort Riley (45 miles to the east, and 25 to the South) - I'm not aware of any missile test ranges though; I thought most of that occurs in Nevada and Utah?

C) Why is there a very strong (hard to see in my photos, but it was very clear in-person) secondary contrail going almost parallel to (about 30 degrees up from) the ground?

Note: I'm not claiming any conspiracy theory here (obviously this is part of a faked moon landing! :lol:), I'm just genuinely curious about what it was. Several major (i.e. international) commercial airports and military airfields are in this region, but this seemed different than a typical contrail (perceived nearness to me, direction (very upwards), and the secondary perpendicular contrail).

Definitely not an orbital launch. In the US, orbital launches only take place from coastal regions due to safety concerns. If there was a gap in the contrail, that would indicate that the rocket staged at that point and an orbital rocket wouldn't stage that low.

Maybe a sounding rocket? Or possibly a high-power amateur rocket - it looks like Kansas has at least one such high-power rocketry club.

"Dorothy swaps from wind energy to rocket fuel for powering house, you'll never believe what happens next!"

Or possibly a high-power amateur rocket - it looks like Kansas has at least one such high-power rocketry club.

That's what I was thinking. I couldn't find (by googling) any rocket clubs in that particular segment of Kansas, but that's probably the most likely explanation.

"Dorothy swaps from wind energy to rocket fuel for powering house, you'll never believe what happens next!"

*clicks on ad repeatedly*

"Dorothy swaps from wind energy to rocket fuel for powering house, you'll never believe what happens next!"

Why not both?

I certainly can't identify what it is from the trail itself (which I suppose might be inconsistent with a non-rocket), but doesn't the amount of parallax indicate that its trajectory really isn't that vertical after all? The additional contrail that seems to hug the horizon was indeed probably traveling perpendicular to the "rocket," but that doesn't necessarily mean the other aircraft was traveling up; it could also have been moving toward you without gaining much altitude.

That's for TWA flight 800, part 2. They're still target practicing.

"Dorothy swaps from wind energy to rocket fuel for powering house, you'll never believe what happens next!"

Sorry to disappoint. It turns out they use kerosene for rocket fuel, and a Mrs. Dorothy Blenkins of rural Franklin County KS had simply shut down her windpump and started using a kerosene generator to fill her home cistern.

This is not a rocket. The contrail is mostly along the horizontal plane. Had it been a rocket the trail would have been much "shorter" due to the way the human mind would first think about it.