Thursday, February 04, 2021

Colonizing the Planets

One of the world's most popular interactive maps is the True Size Of ... , which is a fun tool for comparing the size of different countries by placing one country on top of another. The True Size Of ... is particularly useful for showing some of the size distortions which are inherent in the Mercator projection, for example by placing Greenland on top of the continent of Africa. 

One thing that the True Size Of ... isn't very good at is providing an inter-planetary scale. Obviously the most pressing question on most American's minds is how big is the United States compared to the planet Venus. Which is where Countries Mapped onto Solar System Bodies comes in. Countries Mapped onto Solar System Bodies is an invaluable tool for comparing the sizes of countries and continents to the planets and moons of our solar system.

Using the tool you can overlay the shape of any country on top of an interactive globe of any of this solar system's planets or moons. This is actually a very good way to visualize the size of the planets. Most people have a reasonable understanding of the scale of their country compared to the Earth. Projecting a country onto a planet provides a fantastic reference for judging the size of that planet using a scale that is very familiar to the user.

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