Ages through Time and Space

Daily Graph Series

R Codes

# Clear R Environment: 

rm(list = ls())

# ARDESTINE font used in this post can be download from https://fontzone.net/download/ar-destine
# Install and use external fonts in R: https://rpubs.com/chidungkt/392841
# Reference: https://twitter.com/hashtag/TidyTuesday?src=hashtag_click, 
#            https://github.com/MaiaPelletier/tidytuesday/blob/master/R/2020_Week29_Astronauts2.R


library(tidyverse)
library(ggtext)
library(extrafont)

# Get and pre-preocess the data: 

read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2020/2020-07-14/astronauts.csv') -> astronauts 

astronauts %>%
  mutate(age_at_mission = year_of_mission - year_of_birth) -> astronauts

# Prepare text for annotation bubbles: 

texts <- tibble(
  age = c(77, 72, 15, 20),
  year = c(2010, 1985, 1968, 2005),
  text = c(
    "This is not a typo! Meet **John Herschel Glenn Jr.**, who travelled to space aged 77 in 1999. What a legend!",
    "1985 was the year that saw the **most astronauts in space**, with a total of 62 on 28 missions.",
    "The **two youngest astronauts** were Gherman Titov and Valentina Tereshkova, both aged 26. They each flew only one mission. It would be 1982 before the next female astronaut took to space.",
    "**Sergei Krikalev** went on his first of six missions aged 30. Only two astronauts have been on more missions: Franklin R. Chang-Diaz and Jerry L. Ross, who both started their careers in the 1980 NASA-9 selection."),
  vjust = rep(0.5, 4))

# Make draft plot: 

ggplot(astronauts) +
  geom_point(aes(y = year_of_mission, x = age_at_mission, colour = sex,
                 size = hours_mission, alpha = total_number_of_missions), show.legend = F) +
  scale_colour_manual(values = c(male = "#e1f7fa", female = "#ffa72b")) +
  labs(title = "
Ages through Time and Space
       ",
       subtitle = "  
**Astronauts have got older, missions have got longer, and starting younger is no guarantee  
of going more often.** 
  
Each dot is an astronaut on a mission. The larger the dot, the more hours the mission took,  
ranging from 0 to over 10,000 (14 months!). The more transparent the dot, the fewer times  
that astronaut went to space.  
The slope of age by year of mission is similar for <span style='color:#e1f7fa'>male</span> and <span style='color:#ffa72b'>female</span> astronauts, with a 20-year  
time lag.",
       x = "Age at start of mission",
       y = NULL,
       caption = "Data Source:  Mariya Stavnichuk and Tatsuya Corlett") +
  xlim(c(10, 85)) +
  geom_textbox(data = texts, aes(age, year, label = text, vjust = vjust),
               colour = "white", box.colour = "#1d1330", size = 3.8,
               fill = "#1d1330", family = "Corbel Light", maxwidth = unit(8, "lines"),
               hjust = 0.5, show.legend = F) +
  annotate("curve", x = 77, xend = 77, y = 2005, yend = 1999.5, curvature = 0, 
           size = 0.75, arrow = arrow(length = unit(2, "mm")), colour = "#938ca1") +
  annotate("curve", x = 65, xend = 60, y = 1985, yend = 1985, curvature = 0, 
           size = 0.75, arrow = arrow(length = unit(2, "mm")), colour = "#938ca1") +
  annotate("curve", x = 21, xend = 34, y = 1963, yend = 1981, curvature = 0.3, 
           size = 0.5, linetype = 2, arrow = arrow(length = unit(3, "mm")), colour = "#ffa72b") +
  annotate("curve", x = 21, xend = 26, y = 1970, yend = 1964, curvature = -0.4, 
           size = 0.75, arrow = arrow(length = unit(2, "mm")), colour = "#938ca1") +
  annotate("curve", x = 25, xend = 30, y = 2000, yend = 1990, curvature = -0.3, 
           size = 0.75, arrow = arrow(length = unit(2, "mm")), colour = "#938ca1") +
  theme_minimal() +  
  theme(plot.margin = unit(rep(1, 4), "cm")) + 
  theme(plot.background = element_rect(fill = "#1d1330", colour = NA),
        panel.grid = element_line(color = "#1d1330"),
        panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#1d1330", colour = NA),
        text = element_text(colour = "white", family = "Corbel Light"), 
        plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0, size = 24, family = "AR DESTINE"),
        axis.text = element_text(color = "white", size = 10),
        plot.subtitle = element_markdown(hjust = 0, size = 13, lineheight = 1),
        axis.title = element_text(color = "white", size = 10),
        axis.ticks = element_blank())