It was a Vandenburg Minuteman II launch, its the first test of the Star Wars system.
check out: http://www.vafb.af.mil/news_flash
On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 19:21:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Eugene Leitl <eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
> Reply-To: exi-la@extropy.org
> To: extropians@extropy.org, exi-la@extropy.org
> Subject: Edwards base launch (L.A. area)
>
>
> Has anybody seen the Edwards base launch a couple of minutes ago? The
> sky is covered with beauuutiful stratospheric silver clouds. (I can
> only hope I won't see many such launches in the next half an hour).
>
> Has anybody any idea what that was? Military sat launch, THAAD, whatever?
>
>