50 Years of Space Exploration - Visual Flight Map

National Geographic published this amazing flight map that shows the flight paths of all 200 space missions in the last 50 years.  A zoomable map is on the NG website, and a high-res image is available from Adam Crowe on Flickr.

Art by Sean McNaughton, National Geographic Staff, Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics.

Found on Fast Company.

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!

Voyager Infographic video

Voyager from Jaime Arvizu on Vimeo.

Jaime Arvizu, a student at the Vancouver Film School, sent me a link to this infographic video that he and his team mates (Tyler Lemermeyer and Leo Aguiar) created for their Motion Design class.  You can find a high resolution version at Jaime's blog.

Thanks for sending this in Jaime, I love it!

How Star Wars Changed the World

The original Star Wars has certainly gone on to produce more than just sequels.  It has created the people and the technologies that are now considered the best in the industry.  Michelle Devereaux created this family tree for Wired magazine back in 2005 and I love how the line colors indicate people, technologies and company connections, but the tree is organized into movies, sound, effects and technologies.

I actually believe the tree is incomplete.  I think Star Wars had far greater reach and influence that what Michelle mapped out here.

It all started with a band of rebels who wanted to help a farmboy follow his dream.  Three decades later, the Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and videogames (LucasArts).  Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors.  This chart maps the people, companies and technologies touched by the Force. - Michelle Devereaux

Thanks Alwyn!

Bio-Suit EVA Infographic Poster

From the Man Vehicle Lab at MIT, an infographic poster from professor Dava Newman and illustrator Cam Brensinger.  The poster shows the technology development in spacesuits and some future design concepts.

Race to the Moon

Cool poster I found over at historyshots.com shows the altitudes reached by all of the U.S. and Russian launches leading up to the 1969 moon landing.

From 1961 to 1969 the USSR and the United States were locked in a history-making race to land the first person on the moon. This detailed map explains the story of this titanic contest in a clear and informative manner.

How to Spot a Cylon

This poster for fans of the new Battlestar Galactica is for sale over at QMx for $19.95, so there isn't a high resolution file available. Although, I would propose an image that we could read better would help sell more posters. In the spirit of airline emergency procedure cards, 10 ways to identify a Cylon among us.

Be Aware. Be Vigilant.

EDIT: I noticed this is now available at Amazon too:

Analytics according to Captain Kirk

This is fun one from Matt Bailey, founder of SiteLogic.com.

You can read his full description here, but the point is the use of images in the chart so you can visualize the relationship between separate pieces of information. Phasers represent fights in each episode, Kirk's photo represents affairs during the episode with Captain Kirk and the colored shirts show fatalities of an actor in that colored shirt in that particular episode. Proving once and for all that being a red-shirted ensign is a hazardous job on the Enterprise.

Starship Dimensions

As a follow-up to my earlier post on the Starship Comparison Poster, the Starship Dimensions website has a much more extensive library of sci-fi ships all shown to scale. There are so many here that the website is broken up into different pages from small scale up to "Big" scale. Click on the tabs across the top to pick a scale (100X, 10X, 1X, etc.).

Fantastic resource. Jeff Russell has done a great job accumulating the images and tracking down their relative sizes.

Starship Comparison

Huge starship comparison image/poster that combines the starships from most of the poular scifi movies and shows into one graphic. Someone spend a lot of time figuring out the relative dimensions of these, and this really adds a new perspective to your favorite shows.

Includes Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Gallactica (the original series), Farscape, 2001:A Space Odessey, and a few others.