The Planets to Scale

OK, kinda love this to scale comparison of the various planets of the solar system. Kinda cool to remember how much bigger some of the other planets in the neighbourhood are than good old Earth. Despite me starting off in astrophysics, it’s never top of mind how big Uranus and Neptune are.

Was also kinda heartened this week with UNESCO’s announcement that it wants to make the site of the first lunar landing a World Heritage site (which, to me, seems obvious that it should be made so.).

Interestingly, and in response to the X-Prizes for landing on the lunar surface (Northrop-Grumman, Google), NASA has actually put together guidelines for preserving the site of the original moon landing.

Just for those keeping count, it was 43 years ago this past week man first landed on the moon. We, um… haven’t been back a lot since.

And sadly, at least the guy on OpEd at the NYTimes thinks we’re going to be bound to the limits of the Solar Sydtem for a while. Good read, though just makes me want to work on a warp drive just to prove him wrong.

via Space Facts