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!)
Earlier this evening, my friend Jeff Farr posted the following chart on Facebook:
And now I have no trouble visualizing it at all. Why didn’t somebody just say it was nearly as wide as the Enterprise‘s saucer section… sheesh!
The origin page 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…
I love how the Titanic is waaaay bigger than anything else on the chart. It would be interesting to see a graphic comparing the Titanic to modern cruise ships, tankers, and aircraft carriers.
Well, I haven’t been able to find an actual chart, but various sources I’ve googled indicate the old girl was pretty small compared to modern ships.
Titanic was 882 ft. long. The Queen Mary beat that only a couple decades later, with a length of 1,019.5 ft. The Queen Mary 2, which came online in ’04, is 1,132 ft., and the biggest cruise ship currently operating, the Oasis of the Seas, is 1,181 ft. long.
There were several different classes of U.S. aircraft carrier during World War II, all roughly the same size as Titanic, but the modern-day Nimitz-class carriers are 1092 ft., and the USS Enterprise (the only one in her class) is 1,123 ft., the longest naval vessel in the world. (Displacement is another matter; the Nimitz ships are heavier than Enterprise.)
And then there are the cargo ships. A Panamax container vessel (the largest ships that can traverse the Panama Canal) cannot exceed 950 ft., but there are larger ships that bypass the canal. The largest commercial ship I’ve found is a supertanker called the Knock Nevis, 1,504 ft. Titanic would’ve been just a shuttle craft for that monster!
Thanks, incidentally, for giving me a reason to waste 20 minutes at work… 😉
The Disney Wonder, the ship that my family and I have been on four times (we’re big Disney fans…) is 964 feet long.
Not quite the Queen Mary, but almost 100 feet longer than the Titanic. And last time we were on board, they showed us how they steer the ship with a joystick. There’s still a big steering wheel on the bridge, but it’s just ornamental now…
Heh, yeah, the Titanic would probably seem small alongside modern ships, but it looms large in the imagination… its name probably helps with the impression of sheer awesome size that everyone has of it. And of course, it was huge in its day.
A joystick, though? Really? For some reason that really bums me out…