Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.
I was never going to be a rocket scientist. But I found the field that I was blessed to be able to do, and I just put my whole effort into that.
Whether solid rockets are more or less likely to fail than liquid-fuel rockets is debatable. More serious, though, is that when they do fail, it's usually violent and spectacular.
It seems that 'rocket scientist' is a job category that's here for the long haul, like 'mortician.' But all this activity masks an important point: rockets are not a terribly efficient way to lift things into space.
When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.
What I do is not rocket science, but I sure do love it.
The rocket had worked perfectly, and all I had to do was survive the reentry forces. You do it all, in a flight like that, in a rather short period of time, just 16 minutes as a matter of fact.
Failure is impossible.
Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.
Rocket engines generally are simpler than jet engines, not more complicated.