I know its literally rocket science and a lot of very complex systems need to work together, but shouldnt we be able to iterate on a working formular?
In: Engineering
Look at a rocket. A little less than half* of what makes up its total size is stuff that is designed specifically to explode (the fuel). Most of the other half is stuff that is designed to make that first half explode (the oxidizer). To simplify the process, those two halves are often designed to be hypergolic, which means that they blow up just by coming in contact with each other–no detonater required.
So we should really keep these two chemicals as far apart as possible so they don’t explode. But… We actually need to mix them up and go boom for this thing to work. So don’t mix them up wrong, or you’ll get too much boom. Or you’ll get too little boom and the rocket just falls out of the sky. Don’t get any leaks while your skyscraper-sized pile of explosives is being launched past the stratosphere, or you’ll get boom in the wrong place, which will rapidly turn into boom all over.
And that’s not even counting the crazy handling characteristics. Look at the Space Shuttle main engine. On the inside of the rocket bell, you have a 6000 degree Fahrenheit fire that can literally *boil iron*, and they cool it by running *liquid goddang hydrogen* at – 425 degrees Fahrenheit through pipes around the outside of the bell, which is only about 2 inches thick. That is the last place I would want to put liquid Hydrogen.
So your question should really be: “Why don’t rockets blow up *all the time*?” But you already answered that. Because rocket science.
(* if anyone starts nitpicking about the stoichiometric ratios, I will mock you. This is ELI5, not ELIrocketscientist)
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