The Space Shuttle is designed around a horse backside - 5th August 2007
Reading Time 1 minute 50 seconds FOR A PODCAST OF THIS THOUGHT CLICK HERE
This is a great story which was told to me by my esteemed colleague Graham Brent
The Space shuttle has two
large solid rocket boosters (SRBs)
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers would have preferred to make the SRB’s a little bit
fatter, but the SRBs are shipped by train
The
railway track from the factory runs through a tunnel and the SRBs have to
fit through this tunnel.
The tunnel was designed to allow a train though
The size of the train is based on the track gauge
The track gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
This gauge was used because the English expatriates built the US
Railroads.
The first English railway lines were built by the same people, who
built the English tramways,
The tramways used the same jigs and tools used for building wagons
Wagons used this spacing because this was the spacing of the wheel ruts
on the road.
The ruts were initially made by Roman chariots wheels
The chariot size was based on the width of two horse behinds
Good to Great - Jim Collins 7 Habits - Stephen Covey Discover you Strengths - M Buckingham Richard Branson's Auto biography Brilliant Memory - Dominic O'Brien Think & Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill Freakonomics - Stephen Levitt Getting Things Done - David Allen The Machine That Changed the World Watching the English - Kate Fox
Archives
The Mexican Boatman & "Harvard MBA".
3 Blind Men & An Elephant
Someone Everyone Anyone
No-one
12 Questions to
High Performance
The Bee Can't Fly but No-one told the
bee
The Maverick Mindset of
Baseball
Three Men and a Boat
Stop
Two Cannibals & a Beautiful Girl
The Meaning of Life
What was your name again?
Two Frogs
Is Common Sense Possible
An Architects Vision
Does Edison Turn Your Light On
Other books and CDs I've mentioned can be found here
There are loads of great audio programs at Nightingale Conant's ,web site here,
Therefore the restriction to the space shuttles solid rockets is based
on the width of two roman horse’s behinds
That aged old statement of, "We've always done it like that"
started to alarm in my head
So I pondered, all those rules, specification, ways of working etc that
have been around for ever, do I know where they came from, and do I think
it might be time to change a few of them.
The answer for me is yes, what about you?
Till
next week,
Look forward to what you will achieve, and maybe those achievements may
come a little quicker
David Gardner
________________
![Richard Branson's Auto biography](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0753510200?ie=UTF8&tag=thoofthewee03-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0753510200"><img border="0" src="0753510200.01._AA_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-am){kind=link}
![Brilliant Memory - Dominic O'Brien](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844831531?ie=UTF8&tag=thoofthewee03-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1844831531"><img border="0" src="1844831531.02._AA_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-am){kind=link}