How the Romans Influenced the Space Shuttle

[Selezen]

Urban legend or truth - you decide! Once you've read it there's a link to the Snopes article about it at the bottom.

How the Romans Influenced the Space Shuttle
From Chariots to Rocket Boosters

Many people believe that a single choice in their day could not make any huge impacts. This is not true, everyday people make choice that seem insignificant but may in many years determine something beyond their scope of imagination. A good example of this is the relationship between the ancient Roman empire and the current space program. As far a connection as this is there is a very important relationship that has more to do with a single choice than one would suspect.
In ancient Rome when the idea of chariots came about, the makers of chariots had to agree on a width of chariot. By agreeing on an accepted width of chariot the roads could be traveled safer, and the chariots would all resemble each other. Since back n those days the quality of materials was lower than it is now the axles using within the chariots could not be too long, and support the needed weight either.

The chariot makers of the time decided that the width of two standard horses would be used. Since chariots were pulled by two side by side horses the chariots had to fit behind them, therefore two horses side by side was the width. Although not exact, it allowed for a level of uniformity to be built into the chariots.

Now of course when the Romans were finished with their roads the roads did not go away. Some of the roads can still be found throughout Europe. These roads were a lot smoother in the two tracks that the chariot wheels would travel. So when wagons were created for travel it was just simple to make the wagons the same width for the roads. This too kept the axles from breaking under heavier loads.

As for America well when the settlers can to Americas to start a new life, They brought over their tools and knowledge from Europe. When they built wagons in America they used the original chariot width. Along with being at that time a close to universal width, axle material was still low quality.

As the years passed and more wagons were built the width kept roughly the same. When the government put railroads in, they hired people to put them in. As usual the government was also lacking in funds so they used all of the old tools sitting around that could be used for building things.

As the railroads where built they were built using the same standard width of all the wagons since the tools ha been standardized to that width. While this also explains why trains are so narrow, it also shows how one choice can have such a huge impact on the world. But to tie this all to the space program, all that is needed is one single step. The company that was hired to create the space shuttle booster packs wanted to make them bigger, more powerful. But they had to send the rockets across the country by railway.

Of course the railway was set to the standard width. But at a certain point in the trains trip the train had to go through a rather narrow and long tunnel. A tunnel that was based off of the railroad width. This tunnel is just barely bigger than the railroad cars used. The rocket boosters had to fit through this tunnel to get to the shuttle.

As you can see in a long drawn out string of events the space programs rocket booster sizes were based on the width of two horses. A single choice made in someones life during the Roman Empire vicariously led to the limitation of the space shuttle program boosters size. Of course the company could have used trucks to ship the rocket boosters but that would have cost more and businesses are in the business of money not charity. Trains are faster and cheaper at the time and if the only thing it dictated was the size than so what. It does show though that a single seemingly simple choice changed something thousands of years later.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

For the record, in true Mythbusters style, I think it's Plausible.

[PhantorGorth]

I think the details are wrong. The Romans didn't invent the chariot, and it was the Brits that enforced the rail track width to be the standard wagon wheel width. And I am not sure that width was material quality issue, but the principle behind the story seems plausible to me too.

[Selezen]

The Brits did indeed set the gauge, but the gauge was exported to the States by the engineers and workers that went over and set up the rail infrastructure. It mentions it all in the article.

[DaddyHoggy]

The Brits did indeed set the gauge, but the gauge was exported to the States by the engineers and workers that went over and set up the rail infrastructure. It mentions it all in the article.

Do I remember correctly that the German's push into Russia halted initially because the Russian trains used a different gauge of track and so German munition and troop trains couldn't easily advance towards the front line?

I also remember a TV programme (possibly presented by Jeremy Clarkson who is a big Brunel fan) that showed Brunel carried a special cane, which, when unfolded, was exactly the gauge of his trains - so he could check tracks wherever he happened to be to make sure tracks were correctly spaced so that his trains would run on them properly...

[Disembodied]

The Snopes article points out though that the US had several different gauges ... there's the implication that this adversely affected the Southern war effort, too. And Brunel's gauge was different again from other British railways:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_West ... uge_war.22

I don't think the Romans had anything to do with it, though. Roads, carts, chariots etc. all existed before the Romans came along, and they were all built roughly to the same dimensions, because the Romans were using the same stuff - horses, oxen, wood - that everyone else was using, and continued to use up to the dawn of steam power. The Romans didn't have to impose a standard metric, even if they'd wanted to or been able to, because everyone was making things that sort of size already.

Edit: to be picky, Roman racing chariots - quadriga - used horses four abreast ...

[Smivs]

So the question remains...
"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

Well, somebody had to do it!

[Wyvern Mommy]

the wagon width throughout the middle age was indeed set by the romans. the romans might not have invented the chariot, but they were the first to use them extensively on rock paved roads. roads remaining from roman conquests throughout europe meant that wagon wheels had to be spaced to fit the tracks gauged into them over centuries of use. otherwise it would put unnecessary strain on wheels and axles. and that also meant new roads would soon have the same tracks gauged into them.

along came the railroad. the first passenger cars were nothing more than adapted (british) post carriages. that set the standard gauge most of the world would use.

what i think is kinda stretch is the connection to the space shuttle. for one thing, the boosters were shipped in parts and assembled at the cape. for another, whole sections of the saturn V rocket were shipped to the cape, so there must be a way.
and finally, if the rocket boosters would have been the limiting factor, they could have just used more than two.

[Cody]

... whole sections of the saturn V rocket were shipped to the cape, so there must be a way.

Shipped by barge, I think.

[Zieman]

The third stage and Instrument Unit could be carried by the Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy

Bigger parts were indeed transported by barge.

[Selezen]

what i think is kinda stretch is the connection to the space shuttle. for one thing, the boosters were shipped in parts and assembled at the cape. for another, whole sections of the saturn V rocket were shipped to the cape, so there must be a way.
and finally, if the rocket boosters would have been the limiting factor, they could have just used more than two.

The design specification for the SRBs was different to the Apollo rockets, and one of the design criteria (to cut costs) may have been to use the railroad network to ship the parts. Note that I don't know this for sure, this is an assumption.

They could have used more than two. But two rockets designed within the tolerances was enough.