This seems to be the explanation for that "mystery missle": it was merely a jet going across the sky, but due to the angle, the contrail only looked vertical.

See? Look at this:

That's not a photo of the November 3 "mystery missile".  Rather, it's from December 31, 2009.  And it's the same thing going on.  Just a jet.

It's all explained at contrailscience.com.  They got tons of pictures like this.

This of course leads to an even bigger mystery:  WHO THE HELL DEVOTES THEIR TIME TO STUDYING THE SCIENCE OF CONTRAILS?!?