Using Newton's Second Law, can you explain why one of the major advancements in spaceflight was the development of strong ceramic (clay) materials to build their rockets out of instead of heavy metals?

high density can withstand high acceleration and applied forces

Heavy metals are toxic to humans,

the clay is quite abundant and in general it is not toxic

Explanation:

The selection of materials for the construction of rockets takes into account many aspects, the technical resistance to the demands of space travel, but also the abundance of the material. Heavy metals have two very serious problems. The first one, some of them are a little scarce in nature, but the most serious problem is that almost all of them are toxic to humans, for example: lead and mercury.

On the other hand, the clay is quite abundant and in general it is not toxic to living beings.

If we use Newton's second law

          F = m a

let's use the concept of density

         rho = m / V

        m = rho V

let's substitute

         F = rho V a

From this expression we see that a material with high density can withstand high acceleration and applied forces, such as those existing in spacecraft clearance and re-entry to Earth.

Unfortunately with this law there is no criterion to select a material unless its density is high, in addition to this criterion low toxicity criteria for human beings are used,