bureaucracies live forever

[Ken Gargett]

no idea how much of this is true but it sounds very plausible. 

 

.. The U.S. 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 English expatriates designed the U.S. railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the prerailroad 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 had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important! Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything.

Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it. 

[SirVantes]

Surely the right lesson to learn from this is not about bureaucracies, but the perils of conservatism?  If at any point in the chain, someone took the brave decision to change things, however painful in the short term, things would have...well, changed.  It's taking the easy choice, based on what has always been, that's the issue.

Any regime that came after the Romans in any location could have paved/repaired the roads and nipped this in the bud.  And if they were real heavy bureaucracies, you bet it would have happened.  Nothing appeals to a bureaucracy like massive public infrastructure programs - post-Roman New Deals everywhere.

[PuroDan]

Lol. great article Ken!!!

[Cairo]

Agreed--great article.

I am retired from .gov and in our little corner of the bureaucracy it took an incredible effort by teams of very smart people (and a lot of people skills charming higher ups to get them to sign off) to change things from the way they were done during the New Deal.

I figure our new process will probably stay in place for a hundred years....   🙂

[PigFish]

First, no one even knows if the qualifications are true.

We do know that life is full of 'tolerances.' The building that housed the shuttle for assembly was made for it. The government, most governments spend money as though it was stolen from a taxpayer... Did I say that???

If some part that required it be 6 inches wider would have been really needed, the government would have taken, borrowed or printed the money to do it...! That is the way it works. You see anyone in government out of a job during covid??? Nope! They might not be at work, but they are all getting a pay check...

You guys ever hear of prevailing wage. Why pay what the market cost for labor is when you can have an agency 'evaluate it,' inflate it and pay twice what the private sector pays??? This is how governments work.

I can see revision 1 of the shuttle being put on a rail car with mods. By the time the #3 shuttle was built, well... all the problems of practical building surely went out the door!

Cheers!

[Chibearsv]

56 minutes ago, PigFish said:

First, no one even knows if the qualifications are true.

We do know that life is full of 'tolerances.' The building that housed the shuttle for assembly was made for it. The government, most governments spend money as though it was stolen from a taxpayer... Did I say that???

If some part that required it be 6 inches wider would have been really needed, the government would have taken, borrowed or printed the money to do it...! That is the way it works. You see anyone in government out of a job during covid??? Nope! They might not be at work, but they are all getting a pay check...

You guys ever hear of prevailing wage. Why pay what the market cost for labor is when you can have an agency 'evaluate it,' inflate it and pay twice what the private sector pays??? This is how governments work.

I can see revision 1 of the shuttle being put on a rail car with mods. By the time the #3 shuttle was built, well... all the problems of practical building surely went out the door!

Cheers!

If I remember correctly, Isn't the space shuttle the source of the story about a $10,000 toilet seat?  I know that's no big deal now but in the early 80s, that was a lot 🤣

[mprach024]

5 hours ago, Chibearsv said:

If I remember correctly, Isn't the space shuttle the source of the story about a $10,000 toilet seat?  I know that's no big deal now but in the early 80s, that was a lot 🤣

The space shuttle toilet system actually costs $30 million.  Google it you’ll find it.

Seem crazy?  Well you can’t sit on it, has to seal around your private parts (or else “matter” will float in the zero g), and has to be able to evacuate the contents into space without causing a catastrophic pressure loss to a shuttle made of materials a half inch thick in some places.  

It’s like the $800 ashtrays in the submarines.  Seems ridiculous.  Actually they were custom made to break into 3 specific blunt pieces should they take a fall, not shatter or provide any sharp edges.  Can’t have shards of glass flying around in an underwater boat that tends to pitch forward or backward severely as it dives or comes shallow quickly.  In an emergency you don’t want be dealing with broken glass.  

Sure sure plenty of government spending gets a bad reputation, plenty of examples of them earning that reputation, but not all.  Some of these guys are dealing and living in a different world than us being exposed to different obstacles as us guys in our man caves on our tablets and phones.  I’m fine they used $1 of my taxes to keep the astronauts safe and not have to float around with fecal matter.  Just a different perspective.  

 

[Chas.Alpha]

As long as they don’t remove $3 from my tax return for a “Presidential campaign fund.”

[Bijan]

1 hour ago, Chas.Alpha said:

As long as they don’t remove $3 from my tax return for a “Presidential campaign fund.”

Interesting, didn't know about that.

According to Wikipedia:

"Checking the box does not change the amount of an individual's tax or refund. $3 of the tax money is then designated to go to this fund rather than the regular pool. The amount of the money in this pool is determined by how many people check the box."

Still participation has steadily decreased:

"In 1977, about 29% of taxpayers checked off the box to contribute $3 of their taxes towards the fund. The level dropped to 19% by 1992 and dropped further to only 3.6% in 2020.^[13] Two reasons cited for the decline are an erroneous belief that donations increase tax liability, and a general apathy toward the political duopoly.^[14]"

[Nino]

13 hours ago, Chibearsv said:

If I remember correctly, Isn't the space shuttle the source of the story about a $10,000 toilet seat?  I know that's no big deal now but in the early 80s, that was a lot 🤣

Nope, that was a toilet seat for the USAF Bomber Command SAC ....

[RDB]

But this story (which I love by the way) isn’t about bureaucracy at all. There was no hierarchy making and imposing this decision. It’s pure path dependency. If horses asses circa 100AD had been a bit wider, the space shuttle booster rocket would have been a bit bigger.

Yes I have been a public servant before now...