jim phillips
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- May 11, 2003
- Messages
- 504
Does the statement, "We've always done it that way"<br />ring any bells...?<br /><br />The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the<br />rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly<br />odd number.<br /><br />Why was that gauge used?<br /><br />Because that's the way they built them in England, and<br />English expatriates built the US Railroads.<br /><br />Why did the English build them like that?<br /><br />Because the first rail lines were built by the same<br />people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's<br />the gauge they used.<br /><br />Why did "they" use that gauge then?<br /><br />Because the people who built the tramways used the<br />same jigs and tools that they used for building<br />wagons, which used that wheel spacing.<br /><br />Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd<br />wheel spacing?<br /><br />Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the<br />wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long<br />distance roads in England, because that's the spacing<br />of the wheel ruts.<br /><br />So who built those old rutted roads?<br /><br />Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in<br />Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have<br />been used ever since.<br /><br />And the ruts in the roads?<br /><br />Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which<br />everyone else had to match for fear of destroying<br />their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for<br />Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of<br />wheel spacing.<br /><br />The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet,<br />8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications<br />for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies<br />live forever.<br /><br />So the next time you are handed a spec and told we<br />have always done it that way and wonder what horse's<br />azz came up with that, you may be exactly right,<br />because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just<br />wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war<br />horses.<br /><br />Now the twist to the story...<br /><br />When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch<br />pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the<br />sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket<br />boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at<br />their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the<br />SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter,<br />but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the<br />factory to the launch site.<br /><br />The railroad line from the factory happens to run<br />through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit<br />through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than<br />the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now<br />know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.<br /><br />So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is<br />arguably the world's most advanced transportation<br />system was determined over two thousand years ago by<br />the width of a Horse's azz.<br /><br />And you thought being a horse's azz wasn't important ??<br /> <br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------