{"id":1981,"date":"2010-07-01T22:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T22:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1981"},"modified":"2010-07-01T22:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T22:50:00","slug":"putting_some_perspective_on_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/01\/putting_some_perspective_on_th\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Some Perspective On Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the glow of urban lighting hasn’t completely washed out the nighttime sky, you may have spotted the International Space Station zooming overhead. I’ve seen it several times myself, a golden spark flashing across the Salt Lake Valley at breakneck speed. On one memorable occasion, it had a companion spark, one of the space shuttles running alongside just after undocking to come home. (I don’t remember which shuttle it was… I really should make notes about that sort of thing). Anyhow, you may have wondered just exactly how big the station is to be visible to the naked eye like that. And if you’re like me, the usual description — that it’s the size of a football field, the largest object we’ve ever put into space — doesn’t really help much. (I can’t help it if I’m not sports-minded!)<\/p>\n

Earlier this evening, my friend Jeff Farr posted the following chart on Facebook:<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

And now I have no trouble visualizing it at all. Why didn’t somebody just say<\/i> it was nearly as wide as the Enterprise<\/i>‘s saucer section… sheesh!<\/p>\n

The origin page<\/a> for this nifty graphic has some more information about the station, its systems, and how long it’s going to be up there, if you’re interested…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the glow of urban lighting hasn’t completely washed out the nighttime sky, you may have spotted the International Space Station zooming overhead. I’ve seen it several times myself, a golden spark flashing across the Salt Lake Valley at breakneck speed. On one memorable occasion, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-final-frontier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}