After the explosion, the female narrator, apparently without irony, told the audience, “There, as you saw, and as we promised, an exciting end to the Starship Inaugural Integrated test flight.”

While the narrative of Von Braun’s “Last Card” theory unrolls like a terrific science fiction novel that might have been written by Isaac Asimov, the Internet and UFO groups are abuzz with either fantastical or prescient interpretations of the recent shoot downs of “objects” of North America...