FW: Space Shuttle- NAC

[Alan Pritchard]

But made me laugh....

Best Regards,
Alan Pritchard

Network Administrator
Mechanical Design Engineer
Seaeye Marine Ltd.
+44 (0)1329 289000

>
>Space Shuttle's design is based on a Horse's Ass!
>
>This story is incredible, so take a few minutes for the read, and then
>sit back and ponder the situation.  Does the statement, "We've always
>done it that way" ring any bells.  ?
>
>In the United States the standard railroad gauge (distance between the
>rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.  That's an exceedingly odd number, so 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.
>
>So the United States standard railroad gauge of
>4 feet, 8.5 inches was derived from the original specifications for an
>Imperial Roman war chariot.
>
>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 Now the ironic 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 SRB 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.
>
>