Subject: Railroads and Rocket Science

Railroads and Rocket Science!

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates
built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and
tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break
on
some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing
of
the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)
for
their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match
for
fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for
Imperial
Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived
from
the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And
bureaucracies
live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder
what
horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial
Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends
of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at
Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit
fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the
launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel
in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is
slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know,
is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's
most
advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by
the width of a horse's ass.

---- and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

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