TRADITIONS: The Old Rutted Road -- Part II!

And now, the twist to the story ... there's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, we see two huge booster rockets saddled to either side of the rocket’s main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. Thiokol Corporation makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah.

The Thiokol SRB design engineers might have preferred to make them a bit bigger … wider not taller, but 1.) the SRBs had to ship by train from the factory to the launch site; 2.) the railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains; 3.) the SRBs had to fit through a tunnel which is only slightly wider than the railroad track; and 4.) the railroad track is about as wide as two Imperial Roman war-horses.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's behind! Think about that!

Not only do unreasonable or irrational traditions ruin the vision of the church but they are the cause of some baggage that prevents it from being bigger and going higher and farther.

Ed. Note: Don't think that I'm anti-tradition; I am simply pro-church … the one that is made up of real, live, redeemed children of God.

[The Good, Clean Funnies List], Box 476, Harvest, AL 35749-0476; USA; “The Impact of the Roman Empire on Space Shuttle Design,” 20 October 1999, “ Received from L. Rodney Ford via Doug Taylor.”]

Christianity, Illustrations,
Religion, Traditions