The Worst Enemy of Progress: Standards? (3/5)

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

In the previous two articles on progress I might have made the impression that counter-intuitively, to achieve actual progress, older might be better. Is that so? Let’s look at an extreme example of this — a fairly well-known and often re-circulated story that “space shuttle booster’s width is two horse asses plus X”. (Or, here is a short version with pictures, in Tweet form, if you prefer Twitter.) Which, by extension, would mean that the newest addition to NASA’s fleet, the Space Launch System (SLS), is related to a 2000 year old roman horse’s ass, by the fact that it is using an extended version of the said Space Shuttle’s SRBs.

While the conclusion seems to be that this is an urban legend, and the Space Shuttle might not have any relation to a horse’s ass whatsoever, the basic story (bar the newer, Usenet-based addition with the Space Shuttle) is sound: the width of the railroad track is based on the dimensions of two horse rears, same as the chariot width in the old Rome. It is even affirmed in the same article that posits the story is not true:

[…]the dimension common to both was that of a cart axle pulled by two horses in harness (about 1.4m or 4ft 8in). This determined both the Roman gauge and Stephenson’s, which derived from the horsedrawn wagon ways of South Northumberland and County Durham coalfields.[…]
[from: Crow, James…