For $10 a month, or $100 a year, you support a simple mission: spread great data visualisation wherever it comes from. You help fund the work of finding, sourcing and explaining the charts that deserve a wider audience. And you back a publication built on generosity, transparency and the belief that better understanding makes a better world.
CHART 1 • SpaceX drives America’s rocket surge
I always love Visual Capitalist data visualisations and this one is absolutely gorgeous. It shows annual space launches since the start of the space race. As you can see, the chart shows a huge rise in space launches by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, vastly outpacing the United States.
Of course, things have since changed and the Soviet Union has now become Russia. Although Russia still sends quite a considerable number of satellites and spacecraft into orbit, those numbers have declined quite considerably since the end of the Cold War.
Source: Visual Capitalist
The really interesting rise, though, is China, which has rapidly increased its number of launches. The story in the US is also incredibly interesting. They are launching more satellites than ever, partly because of SpaceX and its Starlink programme, which has literally put tens of thousands of satellites in orbit to give the world high-quality, fast internet access even in the remotest of locations.
Paid subscribers get access to the other four charts: Amazon’s narrow revenue lead, X’s implausible revenue-per-worker bar, Britain’s long-term borrowing costs and congressional anger. Together, they show why definitions and baselines matter as much as the headline number.
