As I recently experienced, you still can learn from mistakes and failure, or at least we used to in America. The ignoramuses who continue to poo poo space travel/exploration will try to exploit this forgetting how often our attempts in the Fifties and Sixties had difficulty. Numerous technologies had serious hiccups until we got it right. Hell, we continue to piss away billions on the Osprey hybrid plane-helicopter that hasn’t worked reliably enough to be deployed. This exercise in futility has been happening since the Seventies.
It just comes to mind because recently I heard a co-worker shoot off his ignorant mouth about how much money NASA spends. I explained to him, it’s a pittance. For every dollar you give to the Feds, half of a penny goes to NASA.
Anyhow, the other burning question I have with Antares, why did they launch from Virginia? Florida is the best spot to maximize the Earth’s rotation into assisting the rocket into making a decent orbital altitude.