Video: Unmanned NASA Rocket Explodes Spectacularly Upon Launch

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Insert midterm–themed metaphor of your choice here.

Update: Huh — I’m old enough to remember a NASA that not only bested the Russians, it didn’t rely on their technology. But as investment information entrepreneur Eric Scott Hunsader tweets, “Elon Musk nailed it about Antares rocket 2 years ago in Wired.” Musk told Wired, “One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”

What could go wrong?