THE OLD PHILOSOPHER SEZ,

How important is a Horse's Arse. Real important, as you will see...

Horse's Arse

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" 
ring any bells... ?

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 between 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 (YYAAYYY!!!). So the next time you are 
handed a specification and wonder what horse's 
arse 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 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 arse.  
... and you thought being a HORSE'S ARSE wasn't 
important!