Post by thread:NASA in a rut ?

Excellent. Loved this one. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: Jinx To: spam_OUTPICLISTTakeThisOuTMITVMA.MIT.EDU Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 2:05 AM Subject: NASA in a rut ? A tenuous (?) connection between several recent postings about railways, standards, and space shots. And, to keep it relevant, even the earliest railway engineers were known to have used PICs ........ and shovels ------------ The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an odd number. Why is that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. 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 tramway used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that 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 on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that was the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads ? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts ? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels and wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, we have the answer to the original question: The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. When we 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 might 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 had 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. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was essentially determined by whoever built the Roman legions' chariots. Specifications 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 war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Pedro Drummond wrote: > > Specifications 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 > war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back > ends of two war horses. iirc, the Europeans couldn't even get that right. Or maybe they did have it right. Hard for an enemy to invade when all his rolling stock has to be parked at the border. -- Bear Technology Making Montana safe for Grizzlies http://people.montana.com/~bowman/