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From: "Thomas y Reina Jakits" <rijakits@cwpanama.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
References: <list-1637354@logan.com>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: metric system - 
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 08:59:16 -0500
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Maybe some one is deep enough involved to guess/suggest:

On a system like the Space Shuttle, where every ounce costs a lot of 
fuel/money/loss-of -payload:
Would it not have been more efficient/economic if Thiocol would have built 
one end assembly plant each right at the launch complexes to make the SRBs 
the optimum size ( not compromised by railroads and horses backsides?)

TJ


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Lendich" <lendich@optusnet.com.au>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 2:59 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: metric system -


> Not entirely correct - but who the hell cares.
> You will find 4'8" was the original spacing but a 1/2" was added for some 
> reason that I can't remember.
> The English didn't build the railway, they supplied the first lot of 
> railway engines.
> The  2 horses arce/ ass is a furphy- apparently!
> I guess it depends on what you read on the internet
>
>> Dave, close but not excatly right!
>>
>> Here the copy of a post from the Atlantica-list (Wingco - BWB - 
>> aircraft):
>>
>> JUST A QUESTION OF STANDARDS
>>
>> Especially this part.
>> 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 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 spec and told we have always done it
>> that way and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, 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 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 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 ??
>> Correction: Horses arse!!
>>
>> TJ :))
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On 27, Nov , at 7:07 AM, Sandy wrote:
>>>
>>>> Let me make sure I have this right.
>>>> Two horse's ass's (how do you spell the plural of ass?) determined the
>>>> diameter of the Space Shuttle booster rockets.  Is that about it?
>>>>
>>>  Ass is another name for a donkey; the word you want is 'arse' and the 
>>> plural of arse is arses
>>> The width of a roman road was determined by the wheel tracks of a roman 
>>> war chariot drawn by two horses side by side. When the railroads were 
>>> developed in England they followed the main arterial roads which were 
>>> originally the roman roads, so the rails were laid on the wheel tracks; 
>>> about 5 feet apart. 19th century rail technology in the US came from 
>>> England so US railroads indirectly were based on roman roads. The space 
>>> shuttle boosters were designed to be transported by rail so the width 
>>> was based on roman two horse chariots.
>>> That is about it, BR, Dave McC
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
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