NASA: Grounded

Jeff Leitner of Insight Labs asked a number of artists to do a piece based on a topic for an upcoming Insight Lab. My topic was NASA and its budget constraints so I chose to create a piece that illustrated all of the federal budgets for NASA since its formation.

Each planet is generated with code to represent NASA’s budget as a percent of the total Federal budget, with the earth representing the scale of the total federal budget. The colors are programmatically sampled, pixel by pixel, from an important NASA related symbol of that year. For example a shuttle patch from a launch that year, or a Time magazine featuring NASA on the cover.

To view more about this Insight Lab go to Insight Labs: Reclaiming Public Fascination