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).
