As I was looking at a model rocket that the kids and I launched yesterday land in the tallest three of the neighbor's yard, this question came to mind..... Does NASA use railroads to transport rockets or other "space things" to and from launching areas? If so, is there any info regarding this on the web? nbrail
Helo, Yes, the UP ships the solid rocket boosters from Morton/Thikol in Utah to Florida via CSX(?). Not sure how often. Also NASA has their own little rr. There was an article within the last 12-18 monthes in Trains or Railan/Railroad about the NASA operations. MIKE
It's funny you should mention about nasa and rr's. Now I'm not going to get this completely correct but try and follow it, OK? We all know that the guage of US rails is about 4'8.5" right. Well did you ever wonder how that came about? Lets look at the first Rail road cars or as they were called, carriages, right? They were built from horse drawn carriages right? Since the cariage makers already had patterns for existing carriages he just put flanged wheels on them and put them on rails. Now if you put two horses next to each other, you'll find that their width is about 4'8.5". Now I'm sure Thiakol wanted to build their rocket booster to their own specs, but since the boosters were to travel by rail the width of the boosters were limited to the width of 2 horses asses. I didn't think that up and the person who did did a much better job of explaining it. But you get the idea of the connection of NASA and RailRoads. ------------------ When in doubt, empty your magazine.
AH YES! But you left out WHY the carriges where built to that standard in the first place. It happened to be the wheel base for a Roman war chariot, which accomidates the two horses behinds as metioned earlier. The roman roads had rutts cut in them at the same spacing thus, everyone else built their carts and buggies to the same. Made for a much nicer ride. ------------------ RAILROADING-TO-THE-MAX! Brent Tidaback
Green Frog Productions makes a nice video called Rockets & Rails -- The NASA Railroad. Ask your local hobby shop to order it through me at Western Star Distributors or go direct to Green Frog.
