Chinese missile launch photos from airliner
 

https://jpcvanheijst.com/blogs/2017/...est-over-china

Anybody else seen something like this?

They claim in the post that this was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, so not "Chinese" most likely. As a commercial pilot I'd assume they knew exactly where they are, and the perceived distance to the launch site.

So that suggests "someone else".

Yes, probably 15-20 years ago

Westbound longhaul flight, Night, east of Baikonur but not by much,.... No heads up from ATC. Launched from just right of our 12 o'clock, appeared to travel up windscreen and over the top into our very high three o'clock...watched it past staging...several other aircraft in the area will have seen similar. Another company aircraft had similar happen a few months before and I guess it must have happened many times since.


With the benefit of hindsight and the web turned out what we saw was a "Soyuz" basic launcher with an early varient Fregat upper stage...and we reckon we were within 200km of the launch site....no idea of what the range safety area was in terms of "splay"...but if it had gone wrong we were certainly well placed for a h*** of a view...it was spectacular enough as it was..

I've seen a similar launch in the predawn winter sky over the NOPAC on A590 eastbound. As with the recent incident, the glowing blobs expanded over several minutes with what looked like a couple of staging events.

Around three decades ago we were in Gander's airspace going feet wet out over the NAT tracks to Europe. Someone on guard freq said 'look overhead'. The Space Shuttle was sailing above on a high inclination launch. The motors were powered by the external tank and the vehicle left a glowing trail of ionized gas as it zoomed over us in the darkened sky.

Having mde previous post had time to check logbook:

It was 8th Feb 2000, (GMT date) - Soyuz-U/Fregat

http://www.starsem.com/news/images/ST07.pdf

I’ve seen several Space Shuttle launches out of Cape Canaveral from light GA aircraft.
Nothing like these “shock waves” though...

Bit more info here: SpaceWeather.com

You need to scroll down a wee bit.

Three guys going up to the ISS in Soyuz MS-05 at 1541Z (?) from Baikonur: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/07/2...d-for-station/

I saw a similar plume circa 1980 from Palomar Mountain one evening. It was a Minuteman ICBM launched from Vandenburg. What I saw was like the last few photos by van Heijst. Curiously, the Soyuz-FG burns kerosene and liquid oxygen, whereas the Minuteman uses solid fuel, yet the late stages of the plume illuminated by the setting sun looked similar.

Atlas 5 Launch from Cape Canaveral, 9/2015

Amazing plume!

Funny you should mention it...from this weeks Russian ICBM tests:
https://vk.com/alex_626

An even more astonishing video of the same Atlas 5 launch seen from Orlando:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0C...o&pbjreload=10