[s-cars] Fw: Dimensions

[Tom Black]

> Something to think about!
>
> Railroads
>
> Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells? ... 
> read to the end... it was a new one for me
>
> 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.
>
> ..... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!
>