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April 17, 2003
Space shuttle & horses
Theepan has been trying to cheer me up - must be because I am getting old. One year closer to retirement today!
This one is an urban legend which is unfortunately not true but sounds good anyway. For a detailed discussion of the merits of the story check out www.snopes.com - the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Story follows:
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 spec and
told we have always done it that way and wonder what horse's ass came up with
that, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war 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.Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory in 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!!!
Posted by Ozguru at April 17, 2003 07:04 AM
Comments
Posted by: Rofl at April 17, 2003 07:04 AM
