How the Romans Influenced the Space Shuttle

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.