# Spaceshuttle/Horses arse

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spaceshuttle-horses-arse/7970>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 2, 2000, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spaceshuttle-horses-arse/7970 "2000-03-02T05:04:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![falcon2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dbc845/32.png) [@falcon2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/falcon2)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2000, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spaceshuttle-horses-arse/7970/1 "2000-03-02T05:04:00Z")

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This has urban legend written all over it, but it aint on snopes. Anyone buy it?

> [@](#):
>
> Strange BUT TRUE…“Very Scary”
> 
> 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. Why did the English
> 
> people 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 use that odd  
> spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would
> 
> breaks on some of the old, long distance roads, because that’s the  
> spacing of  
> the old wheel ruts. So, who built these old rutted roads? The first  
> long  
> distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of  
> their  
> legions. The roads have been used ever since then. And the ruts? The
> 
> initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying  
> their  
> wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were  
> made  
> for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel  
> spacing.  
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States  
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original
> 
> specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and  
> Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a  
> specification  
> and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it. You may be exactly right.
> 
> Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to
> 
> accommodate the backends of two war horses. When we see the Space  
> Shuttle  
> sitting on the launch pad, here are two big booster rockets attached to  
> the  
> sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or  
> SRBs.  
> The SRBs are made by Thiokol at the factory in Utah. The engineers who
> 
> designed the SRBs might 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 to the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains.  
> The  
> SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than  
> a  
> railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horse’s  
> behinds. So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world’s  
> most  
> advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse’s  
> ass.  
> And the question to ponder I guess is, how much of your workload is  
> determined by a horse’s—?

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**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2000, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spaceshuttle-horses-arse/7970/2 "2000-03-02T05:10:00Z")

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Um, search people.  
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000218.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000218.html)

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**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2000, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spaceshuttle-horses-arse/7970/3 "2000-03-02T05:39:00Z")

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More drivel here too.  
[http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000512.html](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000512.html)