Why are the Shuttle Boosters the size they are.
 

This is interesting. :rolleyes:

I got this from my Little Brother who is in the Air Force.


INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON

Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.

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?
Well, because that's the way they built them in England , and English engineers designed the first USrailroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England. You see, 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 (including England ) for their legions. Those 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 or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spac ing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) 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, and 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? Ancient horse's asses control almosteverything...and

CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

Well, I knew about the war chariot/track guage relationship, but not the SRB thing. I've learned something today, and all this time I've believed my mind was too full to hold another fact!

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp


http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

Did I forget to mention the following?

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp


Don't forget: almost everything 'forwarded' to you from a long list of others is an urban legend or an intentional attempt to get you to forward it to everyone in your address book to help bog down e-mail systems.

I never claimed it was a "true fact".

I just thought it was funny.

Fred - I take it you didn't care much for the old TV show called "Connections" that used to be on Discovery or TLC. :)

Even the Snopes article from the link you posted indicates there is some basis in truth for some of the "connections" albeit loose ones.

... Bill

I've never heard of it. Must be from a long time ago. No time to Google it.

Connections.... now THAT is a series that would be cool to see on DVD. Wonderful stuff.

I agree with Bill that the tone of the Snopes article was more of a "it could be true" - except for the bit about the tunnel constraining Thiokol's shipping - than a "not true". I guess that's what the Mythbusters would call a "plausible".

What I really want to know is why notebook paper is 8-1/2 x 11 inches? Where did THAT standard come from?