Theorems, laws, and formulas. Wouldn’t it be nice if science were easy? It’s too bad that rocket science has to be, well, rocket science.
Imagine the difficult task of propelling a rocket into space. A rocket headed to the Moon needs lots of fuel—millions of pounds during liftoff. But the Earth’s gravity is pulling the rocket toward the ground. How can a heavy, fuel-filled rocket escape gravity and fly more than 200,000 miles to the Moon? Or farther?
In October 2014, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spacecraft crashed during a test flight. SpaceShipTwo was intended to transport non-astronaut tourists into space. Sadly, one person died in the crash. Another was badly injured. Virgin Galactic’s chief executive George Whitesides admitted, “Space is hard.”
Others agree. Soon after the disaster, Yale Physics professor Meg Urry noted that crashes like this aren’t new. Spaceships have been exploding ever since their invention, she told CNN. That’s part of how technology develops.
Another rocket exploded just days before the SpaceShipTwo crash. Seconds into the launch, a blast knocked the rocket onto the launch pad. The entire vessel blew up. No one was injured, but experiments and supplies headed to the International Space Station were destroyed.
Even though spaceflight is more common than when the first man rocketed to the Moon 45 years ago, it is not routine yet.
Rockets are complex machines. Taking them into space, where conditions are different from Earth, is a challenge that the best scientists in the world still struggle with. As Whitesides observes, “The future rests in many ways on hard days.”
When God created the universe, He built everything on scientific laws. Learning how those laws work is no easy task. You have to make calculations. You have to experiment. People and machines fail. That’s hard—but it’s also good. Difficulties show us the fingerprints of God.
