1 Back when Air Force used to send up their satellite from Vandenburg  Air Force base in Ventura, we often get some interesting sight from the unspent rocket fuel crystallized in upper atmosphere.  The resulting rocket fuel cloud can be seen all the way down in Los Angeles.

It doesn't quite look like this, but that's something to keep in mind.

2 Russian yellow media claims it was a launch of Bulava, that was continuously postponed since October.

3 Failure of a sea-launch missile test does seem the most likely explanation, and in that area that would mean the Russians.  Any debris would almost certainly have fallen back into the water.  This Norwegian news site is also reporting that it was a Bulava test.

4 They also say that atmospheric conditions are what produced the rings of light, so it was a combination of factors that produced the light show.

5 The Russian military has a tendency to deny their failures. So I can believe it was a Russian rocket test that didn't work correctly, which is evident from the video of it spiraling out of control.

6 Bulava was in protracted development and not counting yesterday, 6 out of 11 launches were unsuccesful. What's worse, the rate of failure did not fall as the flight test program progressed, as it usually happens. This means something is wrong with the manufacturing line, not just the design (which is a derivative of Topol-M, a fairly reliable missile, after all). Before this launch the head of M.I.T. (Moscow Institiute Teplotechniki) resigned and a general was put in place to tighten up the operation.

7 Actually, spin-stabilized solid stages are rather common, e.g. American Star 48 is one. Delta II, the most reliable NASA launcher, carries a spin-stabilized stages standard. However, Ed Kyle's library entry for Start-1 suggests that it does not have spin-stabilized components. Bulava may be different, however.

8

That kind of spiral isn't what you'd expect from spin stabilization. It's what you'd expect from a rocket turned on its side, like a jet in a flat-spin.

9

I think this guy aced it:

So that's the drill that will pierce the heavens. Cool.

10 Is this for real?

Frankly both of the videos show things that look nothing alike.

11

The two cameras have rather different levels of sensitivity, and they were viewing it from different angles. It's to be expected that there would be some difference in what they captured.

Yes, it appears to have been real.

12 To be honest I thought it looked like a very cheap photoshopped image! But it appears to be genuine, how strange...

13 Ground track map points to the target site "Kura" at Kamchatka peninsula, which is often used for this kind of tests. The guy who calculated the angles came to merely 23 km, which I'm sure is way too low: practically within the atmosphere. Also, the official military statement says that the malfunction occured during the separation of 2nd and 3rd stages, which ought to happen above 80km.

14

The news reports say it was launched from a sub. And if it was launched from Kamchatka, people in Norway would never have seen it.

The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed the Russian Navy launched a Bulava ballistic missile on the same day, but has declined to make any connection with the lights seen over Norway.

It confirmed the missile was fired from the "Dmitry Donskoi" nuclear submarine, but would not comment on the submarine's location at the time of launch.

I'm guessing the sub is based at Arkhangelsk. Isn't there a big navy base there?

15

Oh, wait, I didn't correctly read what you were saying. You said that Kamchatka was the target. Yeah, I can believe that.

And that map confirms that the sub was based in Arkhangelsk.

16 I think most of those subs are based in Severomorsk, which does not freeze, unlike Arkhangelsk. They shoot from White Sea because it a) increases the test range and places the trajectory closer to the tracking assets (same ones that are used for launches from Plesetsk) and b) makes the spent stages to fall into national waters where they are harder to scavenge, in case.

BTW, you know what's really funny? They launched Topol-M today from Baikonur (eyewitnesses confirm) and it worked just fine. Two or three lower stages are the same in Topol-M and Bulava. So much for manufacturing defects. Although, granted, we don't know when the Topol was made. It may be an old Soviet stock taken from combat standby to verify that it still worked.

Bet Navy is peeved. I already heard mutterings that Russia ought to place more emphasis on land-based ICBMs which "work". Maybe the Strategic Missile Command launched their Topol so close to Bulava's failure on purpose, to demonstrate that they are a-ok unlike those Navy doofuses.

17 I'm sure the admirals are not happy campers today.