This week’s tidytuesday is about space launches. The dataset comes from JSR Launch Vehicle Database and contains all space missions that have been done worldwide so far. You can find my data analysis here.

I asked myself two questions for the analysis. First, I was interested in finding out which space shuttles were the most popular and when they were used. For my analyses I used ggridges for the first time to try out other forms of visualization. My second question was whether I could put all space launches into one visualization and also highlight individual space missions.

The most popular space aircrafts

It turns out that the most widely used Space Aircrafts were made by the Russians. Number one in the USA is the Space Shuttle.

All space launches ever

Next, I wanted to visualize all space launches in a plot. The visualization is a bit misleading, because for example I-ELDO had only a few missions, but the density function is huge. But I was more interested in getting to know ggridges.

All space launches as dots

A similar plot can be found here. Since the density functions are misleading, I have only shown the space launches as dots and emphasized some important space missions. The result is much more readable than the first plot and I was also able to show which countries entered space travel when, by showing the time course on the y-axis.