O/T Space Shuttle Design

[kccadcam]

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 8-1/2 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 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 8-1/5 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 xxxx 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 "rest of 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. The SRBs had to fit through the 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 xxxx.

 

And you thought being a HORSE'S xxxx wasn't important!!

[Toolfab]

So Kevin,

 

Things alittle slow over at your shop?

 

 

ROFLMAO

[kccadcam]

The R&D shop at Thiokol uses Mastercam and a previous student of mine works there.

He sent me this interesting little tidbit and I just had to share.

 

We are a little slow, calm before the storm!

 

Shuttle not flying really hurts us.

[jeff]

LMAO!

[Keith M]

It's hard to think that something like that would have affect on the space shuttle. Just remember the man who measured the horses behind still affects what some poeple do today. Some times thouse jobs that nobody wants to do could affect the world in a you will never know.

[CPeast]

 

LM(Horses)AO

 

[kccadcam]

I just finished uploading a file called "SRB_test_fire.zip" to the unspecified uploads directory on Jay's FTP.

These are some pics of a test firing of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) out at Thiokol just West of Logan.

Sorry about the fuzziness(older crappy digital camera)

We were about 1 mile away and it was pretty awesome!

The concrete test stand goes some 40 feet into the ground to hold this baby back!!