{"id":85,"date":"2011-08-01T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T03:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/?p=85"},"modified":"2014-09-04T16:22:16","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T06:22:16","slug":"interesting-engineering-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Interesting Engineering Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some very interesting engineering facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Railroad tracks.<\/strong>The\u00a0 US standard railroad gauge<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(distance between the rails) is 4 feet,<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>8.5 inches. That’s<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>an exceedingly odd number.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>
\nWhy was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England , and English expatriates<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>designed the <\/strong>US railroads.<\/strong>Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the <\/strong>pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?\u00a0 Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that <\/strong>they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in<\/strong>England , because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So who built those old rutted roads?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imperial\u00a0\u00a0 Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including\u00a0\u00a0 England ) for their legions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those roads have been used ever since.\u00a0<\/strong>
\nAnd the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match<\/strong><\/p>\n

for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the chariots were made for Imperial\u00a0 Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications f<\/strong>or an Imperial Roman war chariot.\u00a0 In other words, bureaucracies live forever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So the next time you are handed a specification\/procedure\/process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’…. <\/strong>you may be exactly right.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. <\/strong>(Two horses’ asses.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, the twist to the story:<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets <\/strong>attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>in Utah<\/strong>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, <\/strong>but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, <\/strong>and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, <\/strong>is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature <\/strong>of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over\u00a0two thousand years ago <\/span><\/strong>by the width of a horse’s ass. <\/strong><\/p>\n

And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, Horse’s Asses control almost everything…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…Explains a whole lot of things,<\/strong><\/p>\n

doesn’t it?<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some very interesting engineering facts. Railroad tracks.The\u00a0 US standard railroad gauge\u00a0(distance between the rails) is 4 feet,\u00a08.5 inches. That’s\u00a0an exceedingly odd number.\u00a0 Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England , and English expatriates\u00a0designed the US railroads.Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bolderrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}