What was that silver aircraft doing in the parking lot at Aliso Beach on Tuesday?

LAGUNA BEACH — Visitors to Aliso Beach on Tuesday, Oct. 9, couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw a silver rocket sitting on a trailer in the parking lot.

“Oh my God, it’s been crazy,” said Dustin Otterbach, the driver of the trailer. “Some people thought it crash-landed on the beach, others thought it was a submarine and still others thought it was a rocket ship that belonged to Elon Musk.”

The silver missile-like plane with a giant swooping fin over a huge rocket engine arrived at Aliso Beach about 10 a.m. It was on a trailer heading from the Santa Maria Air Show to Fallbrook, when Otterbach drove through Laguna Beach to meet up at the beach with friend Greg Viviani.

“I noticed that the ship was sagging on the trailer and I saw a break in one of the welds,” said Viviani, a local photographer. “I called my dad — picked up some tools real quick to try and fix it. We got a lot fixed and then noticed it wasn’t enough to drive again. So, I called my buddy, a steelworker friend, and he fixed the rig.”

About five hours later, Otterbach was back on his way down Coast Highway, with a stop planned in Capistrano Beach. After meeting another friend there, he planned to continue on to San Diego County.

It turns out the rocket wasn’t what people thought it was. It was a sculpture that Otterbach, 45, an artist who splits his time between Venice Beach and Lake Havasu, Ariz., began creating in 2014 and finished two years ago.

“The Otterbach Rocket” weighs 2,000 pounds and is made from re-purposed materials.

Its body is a 1983 Jetstream 31 and the nose is from a Boeing 727. Otterbach put speakers in the nose and added seating for a VIP lounge with decor made from recycled leather. The wood floor is constructed out of recycled hardwood pallets and the headliner is made of quilted aluminum to simulate old cargo planes.

The artist estimates the rocket’s value at $700,000.

Otterbach is no art novice. He opened a gallery in Laguna Beach in 2001 off Coast Highway at Cress Street. He moved to Venice a few years later and began creating art there.

One of his biggest claims to fame is creating one of the elephant sculptures that debuted in the Elephant Parade, a 38-piece art exhibit that raised money for the preservation of Asian elephants.

The parade of elephants appeared in Dana Point in 2013. Otterbach’s piece was an elephant named Jack, created from airplane aluminum and held together by 4,000 rivets. The sculpture, on display at the Ocean Institute, included airplane gadgets and lights. It sold for $100,000.

Jinger Wallace, of South Laguna, was among the first to come upon the rocket Tuesday at Aliso Beach while on her morning walk.

“It was so unusual,” she said. “Here’s this airplane sitting in the parking lot of Aliso. You look at it and think, ‘What’s it going to do? Is it going to take off?’ “

Chris Caldwell, of Dana Point, also had trouble believing what he saw at the beach.

“It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” he said. “It’s like Buck Rogers, just modern. It’s like B-52 bomber meets a science-fiction spaceship.”