Keep up your sensawunda
April 30, 2013 2:52 AM   Subscribe

 
I have Google Chrome. It says it is up to date on a Windows 7 computer but all I see is a long series of timelines with a few pictures of the differing targets.

What's supposed to happen in html5 ? Dancing gophers?
posted by notmtwain at 3:12 AM on April 30, 2013


So before we launched anything into interplanetary space we were never exploring the solar system? There are a lot of people before Sputnik that would be VERY angry to hear that their accomplishments meant nothing because they weren't 'lol first'.
posted by ZaneJ. at 3:17 AM on April 30, 2013


all I see is a long series of timelines with a few pictures of the differing targets.

Can you click on the various planets? That should pop up more info and pictures.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:26 AM on April 30, 2013


This is spiffy. I don't think I realised that Neptune and Uranus are so close in size, and so much smaller than Saturn.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:45 AM on April 30, 2013


Yeah, click on things (missions, planets), then you get loads of information. (Works for me on IE10 on Windows 8)
posted by alasdair at 3:47 AM on April 30, 2013


Wow.
posted by psoas at 4:28 AM on April 30, 2013


Oh, that was fantastic. I had no idea there had been so many missions over the years; it's so great to see them all one page.

(In case it's not obvious: you can scroll down to see more planets than just Mercury and Venus!)
posted by tickingclock at 5:39 AM on April 30, 2013


Dang, how do I install HTML 5?
posted by dammitjim at 6:49 AM on April 30, 2013


This is much more impressive when not viewed inside the frame within the page. You can full-screen using the "embiggen" icon in the top left, or load the chart by itself in its own browser window/tab.
posted by dammitjim at 6:54 AM on April 30, 2013


Yeah, it works much better if you load the chart by itself instead of having it trapped in that tiny box. It's an unusual presentation; he's got a database in Javascript and then a bunch of custom code to render it into a <canvas> (the HTML5 part). The popups are the main interactive feature that justifies all the Javascript code. As near as I can tell all the code is original, it's not based on any framework like D3 or whatever.

The content is amazing. There's a lot of fantastic data packed into a small space here. I particularly like the horizontal timeline presentation of each mission, gives a sense of how everything fits together.
posted by Nelson at 7:39 AM on April 30, 2013


My Dad worked at JPL for most of his working life, so he tells time in spececraft launches. Whenever we're talking about the past, he goes, "that was around the Mariner 10 launch, so that must've been about '73..." Now that his memory is fading, this will be very helpful. Thanks.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 8:43 AM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


I wish he'd used different colors for the mission status. I have a hard time seeing the difference between the "partial success" grey and the "failed" slightly darker grey.
posted by straight at 9:58 AM on April 30, 2013


So before we launched anything into interplanetary space we were never exploring the solar system? There are a lot of people before Sputnik that would be VERY angry to hear that their accomplishments meant nothing because they weren't 'lol first'.

well, the difference in what you can see of these planets from here on earth vs. what you can see from a telescope in orbit around them, or from the surface, is literally
*sunglasses*
worlds apart.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:05 AM on April 30, 2013


I know that during the race to the moon the Soviet program suffered a lot of setbacks and failed launches. I had no idea just how many failures there were. They would put up three rockets for every one NASA put up and each one would fail. Even some that appear to be successes (by the chart) ended with a failure for the parachute to open and it splashing on the ground.
posted by chemoboy at 11:48 AM on April 30, 2013


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