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Re: [RT] A weekend thought



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Fantastic!

In a message dated 1/10/03 2:39:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, mr.ira@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:


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. The SRBs are made by  Thiokol 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 ??










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