A Tribble’s Guide to Space by Alan Tribble, Princeton University Press, £15.95, ISBN 0691050597
WHAT did the Romans ever do for us? Well, they determined the size of the space shuttle-or so says Alan Tribble in A Tribble’s Guide to Space. Roman wagons set the standard for British road widths. This measure was then recycled for railway widths, which now limit the size of the shuttle’s train-transported solid rocket boosters . . . you get the picture.
Tribble has had a serious career, working on space programmes inside and outside NASA for most of his life. But as fans of…
