Astrodigital

Well sorry, for that. Get a piece of paper and try it. The drake equation isn't too hard. It is just a bunch of probabilities multiplied by an amount of stars. You can even add your own terms if you don't like the one you have, but generally doing this takes yo further from the science...

Anyway, Here is a simple description I snagged from google search [1]:

> The Drake Equation is:
> N = R * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L
>
> where:
> N = The number of broadcasting civilizations.
> R = Average rate of formation of suitable stars (stars/year) in the Milky Way galaxy
> fp = Fraction of stars that form planets
> ne = Average number of habitable planets per star
> fl = Fraction of habitable planets (ne) where life emerges
> fi = Fraction of habitable planets with life where intelligent evolves
> fc = Fraction of planets with intelligent life capable of interstellar communication
> L = Years a civilization remains detectable

Now grab a pen and cocktail and make the math do whatever you want. I think that is you stick to realistic numbers you will get reasonably high values. But we might just disagree there.

[1] http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/drake_equation.html

Here's pretty much the same text dating back from 2000:

http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

Snopes wrote about it:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/

It was also discussed at length here on HN 3 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239682

And another debunking:

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2538/was-standard-railroad-gauge-48-determined-by-roman-chariot-ruts/

So, nice story. Not true.

> Which reminds a bit of http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html as well.

TL;DR - the legend that the width of the shuttle SRBs is derived from a design decision about cart width that goes back to the Romans.

But it's actually a bit more complicated than that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway