What have the Romans ever done for us???
Funny you should ask…
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 US railroads. 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 what about 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 spacing. 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 almost everything!
I’ve seen this one before, but its a good read. I’ve never seen the Space Shuttle booster connection to it though.
And like that other ‘why do we cut the turkey this way before we cook it’ story, its funny because it makes sense after you read it.
Thank you sir.
The First Stage of the Saturn V moon rocket was too big to be transported by rail, so the old Higgins boat plant outside New Orleans was converted to manufacture the booster so that it could barged to Cape Canaveral. It didn’t hurt that Lady Bird Johnson owned the land surrounding the plant, and got a fee for access to the Intercostal Waterway. So indirectly, Roman horses’ behinds helped determine where the moon rocket was built.
I’ve read that the Utah Senator on the committee approving funding for the shuttle stated he wouldn’t vote for it unless the booster was produced in Utah, which required railroad shipment. Morton-Thiokol wanted to build a plant on the gulf coast so the booster could be built in one piece, and shipped by barge to Cape Canaveral.
A multi-segmented booster with leaking o-rings and the Challenger was the price of politics.
jrg- You’re welcome… 😉
NRW- Yep.
Steve- Sen. Frank Moss (D) was the guilty party…
Modern horse’s asses also govern everything.
Alas, while a good story, the chariot width theory appears totally bogus.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4818
TLDR: no such thing as Roman war chariots and there was no standard for wheelbase.
Ed- Well, there IS that…
Robert- LOL, whatever, it’s STILL a good story! And there is some truth to the Morton Thiokol part of it. dammit…
So, now we have 24 days of fuel left to use. We might be going back to horse’s asses sooner then we want. fjb and fgn.
Also, the width of our tanks in WWII was determined be the width of railroad flatcars and tunnels. They also had lift rings built into their design so they could more easily be loaded/unloaded from ships.