Childhood Inspiration

Space is cool, right? I think so. I’m betting you do too. I grew up reading science fiction epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune and Foundation. My favourite Lego sets were the space ones. We had already been to the Moon! I was certain we would all be heading to space on a regular basis once I grew up.

But it never happened. We haven’t even been back to the Moon. My space dreams faded.

Inspiration arrives in unusual forms. My young nephew reminded me of the awe that space inspires. At a family gathering, he eagerly told me all about Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. I remembered my childhood awe of space. And an idea stirred.

As an adult, I understand space is massive. Beyond comprehension. But my childhood images (and school teachings) always showed planets relative to each other in size but never in distance apart. Why?

Simple. Everyone says it can’t be done. Space is too big. By showing planets to scale, you can’t show their separation to scale. And vice versa. Sure, you can watch a video or do projects with the solar system in big outdoor spaces (like a football field). But if you want inspiration on the wall of your room? Zilch.

Online you can scale in and out – like in the famous 1 Pixel Moon site. But that isn’t the same as looking at our whole Solar System all together. To really absorb its imposing scale. Arrogantly, I decided I would make it happen. Challenge accepted.

To start, I needed to figure out how small we can go. It turns out the human eye can see objects as small as (maybe) 29 μm. Colloquially, the width of a human hair, give or take. But even at that size, the Solar System is still many meters wide.

Much harder than I first thought. The scale of space really is a challenge. That explains why no-one was foolish enough to take it on. I might need to move the goalposts.

So I downsized my original plan. But not my ambition. I needed to find an alternative approach to demonstrate the scale of our Solar System. So if I constrain myself to points bigger than 29 μm and the largest standard size paper, what can I do? It turns out, at that scale, the Sun and Mercury fit into one piece of (landscape) A0. I have my new goal!