Space shuttles and horses asses

How the invisible determines everything

I saw an amazing thing on TikTok the other day. I have to add, I only watch TikTok videos for professional reasons and not for any kind of entertainment purposes whatsoever.

In the video, the link between the size of horses and the size of the space shuttle was demonstrated.

It goes something like this.

Roman roads have their width because of the width of wagons, pulled by two horses, side by side.

The width of roman roads lead to the standardisation of the first rail gauges. And this width was adopted for train tracks around the world.

When the space shuttle was designed, the solid rocket boosters had to be transported by rail from their manufacturing plant to the vehicle assembly building at Cape Canaveral. This meant the boosters had to be small enough to fit through several tunnels all across the US. And of course, the size of the boosters were fundamental in designing the external fuel tank and of course the orbiter itself. So the exact size and design of the most complex machine man ever built, was determined by the size of a horse’s ass.

Wonderful thought, right?

I wonder how often we take how we do things on a day to day basis for granted, forgetting that they are rooted in something ancient. If I close my eyes I imagine these fundamental principles, spiralling up from the past into the present.

And I thought of that when I saw this incredible video this week of how sunflower heads have their patterns arranged in Fibonacci sequences, spiralling from the core to the outside.

These sequences appear so often in nature that is feels like Dr. Fibonacci himself was in the front seats when the Big Bang bung.

By the way, I picked this video up from the twitter account of @Rainmaker1973 - probably posting the most amazing stuff that there is to post, everyday. Well worth your time and follow.

Speaking of twitter accounts worth your while:

Tim Urban, who writes the Wait But Why blog (he’s got a great talk about procrastination over on TED that he wrote about here), keeps a pretty tight twitter feed. Last week he asked the question:

What is the most mind-blowing fact you know?

Other things worth your while from this week:

• Bertrand Russell’s message to future generations.

• This time-lapse of an Arctic midnight sun, which really should trouble our Flat Earther friends.

Speaking of procrastination

I have really been enjoying getting writing these weekly missives and I think you all for the replies you send me. I don’t get round to responding to every one. But at this point I would love to know what you think of this letter, its contents and the format. Any thoughts would be highly appreciated!

I hope this has been worth your while today.

Leon