The Space Shuttle
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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 the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
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 wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break 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.
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 by, or for, 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 back-ends of two war horses.
When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there 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 a 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 horses' 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.
Space Shuttle: The External Tank (ET) is sprayed with a foam that turns orange (or rust colored) as a result of ultraviolet exposure (from the sun). This exposure also hardens the foam, improving its insulating properties.
The External Tank on the first Shuttle mission was painted white to match the white color of the shuttle and solid rocket boosters. However, the extra weight only added needless weight to the system, therefore the External Tank was left unpainted in its now familiar rust color for all future missions.
If space debris already circling the globe continues to increase at its current rate, the chance that a space shuttle will collide with debris will increase to 1-in-10 flights by the year 2000
The main engines produce nearly 1 million pounds of thrust and operate about 8 and one-half minutes, from liftoff until the Shuttle achieves orbit. The external tank is jettisoned and burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA flew the first Russian cosmonaut on a Space Shuttle mission in 1994, paving the way for a series of joint flights between the Shuttle and the Russian Mir Space Station from 1995- 1997.
Seven Space Shuttle flights in 1994 deployed 1.7 million pounds of cargo to space, during a total flight time of 81 days, and carried 42 astronauts aloft.
The Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS), or robot arm, provided by the Canadian Space Agency, weighs about 905 pounds on Earth but can move cargo in space weighing 66,000 pounds (29,938 kilograms), objects about the size of a Greyhound bus.
Each of the Shuttle's solid rocket motors burns 5 tons (5,080 kilograms) of propellant per second, a total of 1.1 million pounds (500,000 kilograms) in 120 seconds. The speed of the gases exiting the nozzle is more than 6,000 miles (9,656 kilometers) per hour, about five times the speed of sound or three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The plume of flame ranges up to 500 feet (152 meters) long.
The energy released by the three Space Shuttle main engines is equivalent to the output of 23 Hoover Dams.
The liquid hydrogen in the Space Shuttle main engine is -423 degrees Fahrenheit (-253 degrees Centigrade), the second coldest liquid on Earth, and when burned with liquid oxygen, the temperature in the engine's combustion chamber reaches +6,000 degrees F. (+3,316 degrees C.)
The Space Shuttle's three main engines and two solid rocket boosters generate some 7.3 million pounds (3.3 million kilograms) of thrust at liftoff. Compare that with America's first two manned launch vehicles, the Redstone which produced 78,000 pounds (35,381 kilograms) of thrust, and the Atlas, which produced 360,000 pounds (163, 926 kilograms).
The turbopump on the Space Shuttle main engine is so powerful it could drain an Olympic-sized swimming pool in 25 seconds.
It takes only about eight minutes for the Space Shuttle to accelerate to a speed of more than 17,000 miles (27,358 kilometers) per hour.
Each of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters burns 5 tons of propellant per second.
A Space Shuttle and its boosters ready for launch are the same height as the Statue of Liberty but weigh almost three times as much.