Space Launch Sites over Time

Continuing from last weeks post, I am now looking at space launch sites.

Data

Data are from the main table. In addition, this sites table was manually browsed for interpretation of abbreviations.

List of most important sites

Just by running counts the most important locations (more that 100 counts) are visible. As can be seen, each site has two parts. LC is an abbreviation for launch complex.
                                Site Freq
1  NIIP-53  LC41/1                    310
2  NIIP-5   LC31                      308
3  NIIP-5   LC1                       264
4  NIIP-53  LC43/4                    243
5  NIIP-53  LC43/3                    193
6  GIK-5    LC1                       191
7  NIIP-53  LC132/2                   172
8  NIIP-53  LC132/1                   168
9  NIIP-53  LC133/3                   123
10 CSG      ELA2                      119
11 CC       LC17A                     118
12 CC       LC17B                     107
13 GIK-5    LC200/39                  106
14 NIIP-53  LC16/2                    103
For ease of analysis, the Site is reduced to the first part. In addition, some sites have been renamed. The most important sites:
#NIIP-5=GIK-5=Baykonur
#NIIP-53=GNIIP=GIK-1=Plesetsk
#CC=Cape Canaveral=KSC=John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
#V=Vandenberg
#CSG=Centre Spatial Guyanais, Kourou, Guyane Francaise

Code

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
r1 <- readLines(‘launchlog.txt’)
colwidth  <- gregexpr(‘#’,r1[2])[[1]] %>%
    c(.,max(nchar(r1))) %>%
    diff(.)

cols <- read.fwf(textConnection(r1[1]),
        widths=colwidth,
        header=FALSE,
        comment.char=’@’) %>%
    unlist(.) %>%
    make.names(.) %>%
    gsub(‘\.+$’,”,.) 

r2 <- read.fwf(‘launchlog.txt’,
    widths=colwidth,
    col.names=cols) 
r3 <- filter(r2,!is.na(Suc))
Sys.setlocale(category = “LC_TIME”, locale = “C”)
r3$Launch.Date..UTC[1:3]
r3$Date <- as.Date(r3$Launch.Date..UTC,format=’%Y %b %d’)

xtabs(~ Site , r3) %>%
  as.data.frame(.) %>%
  arrange(.,-Freq) %>%
  filter(.,Freq>100)
#LC=launch complex
ll <- levels(r3$Site)
r3$loc1 <- factor(gsub(‘( |,)[[:print:]]+$’,”,ll)[r3$Site])
xtabs(~ loc1 , r3) %>%
    as.data.frame(.) %>%
   arrange(.,-Freq) %>%
   filter(.,Freq>100)
#http://planet4589.org/space/log/sites.txt
#NIIP-5=GIK-5=Baykonur
#NIIP-53=GNIIP=GIK-1=Plesetsk
#CC=Cape Canaveral=KSC=John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
#V=Vandenberg
#CSG=Centre Spatial Guyanais, Kourou, Guyane Francaise
#JQ=Jiuquan Space Center, Nei Monggol Zizhiqu, China
#XSC=Xichang Space Center, Sichuan, China
#GTsP-4, Kapustin Yar, Volgograd, Rossiya
#L1011 = modified Lockheed L-1011 TriStar aircraft 
#Odyssey = Sea launch from platform

locbycountry <- read.csv(text=’
CC    , USA  
CSG   , France
GIK-1 , Russia
GIK-5 , Russia
GNIIPV ,Russia
GTsP-4 ,Russia
JQ     ,China
KASC   ,Japan
KSC    ,USA
L-1011 ,Air
MARS   ,USA
NIIP-5 ,Russia
NIIP-53 ,Russia
ODYSSEY ,Sea platform
PA      ,USA
SHAR    ,India
TNSC    ,Japan
TYSC    ,China
V       ,USA
WI      ,USA
XSC  , China’,
skip=1,header=FALSE,
  col.names=c(‘loc1′,’Geography’),
  stringsAsFactors=FALSE,
  strip.white=TRUE) %>%
  arrange(.,Geography) 

r4 <- xtabs(~ loc1 , r3) %>%
    as.data.frame(.) %>%
#   arrange(.,-Freq) %>%
    filter(.,Freq>10) %>%
    select(.,loc1) %>%
    merge(.,r3) %>%
    mutate(.,loc1=as.character(loc1)) %>%
    merge(.,locbycountry) %>%
    mutate(.,loc1=factor(loc1,levels=rev(locbycountry$loc1)))

ggplot(r4, aes(loc1, Date,col=Geography)) +
    geom_point()+
    coord_flip()+
    geom_jitter(position = position_jitter(width = .25)) +
    xlab(‘Geography’) +
    theme(legend.position=”bottom”)+
    guides(col=guide_legend(nrow=2))