Solid rocket boosters for the NASA Space Shuttle had to be designed to a specific width of exactly four feet and eight and a half inches because they were shipped by train, and…

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Solid rocket boosters for the NASA Space Shuttle had to be designed to a specific width of exactly four feet and eight and a half inches because they were shipped by train, and that is the standard gauge of American railroad tracks. That specific railroad gauge was originally based on the standard width of pre-railroad tramways in England, which were built to match the rut spacing of ancient Roman chariots pulled by two horses. Therefore, the pinnacle of twentieth-century human engineering and space exploration was directly constrained by the average width of two horse butts from two thousand years ago, confirming that no amount of modern scientific funding can ever truly escape the gravitational pull of historical bureaucratic inertia