not rocket science

[willywhit]

RAILROADS

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.

[skategoat]

Great story. Printed it off for my kids.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Not strictly true.

[jdgang]

I love the internet

[willywhit]

Not strictly true.

wow, you can't believe everything you read on the internet or get in your email.

I stand corrected,sir. :lol:

[Neil Gendzwill]

I have that snopes site bookmarked. Everytime I get a story by email or whatever that sounds legend-ish, I run a few keywords into snopes and they usually have an article. Sometimes they turn out to be true, but mostly not.

[ncermak]

I hate doing it, but whenever I get those BS stories...the online amber alerts, the Microsft fowarding giveaways, etc. I snopes them, and then send a response to the sender. The ones I particularyly love are the ones that tell you a virus is out there, and give you a file to delete. It is usually a essential system file, or something of the likes. always fun to see the sender backpedaling and foward restoratioin instructions after the fact. If its virus related, I usually just look it up on Nortons homepage or the Symantec page...