Back in 2019 I learned about The Maine Solar System Model, a model of the Solar System stretched along Highway 1 in Maine.  The planets are spaced proportionally as they are in the Solar System, with the Sun being part of an entire building.  It’s a really cool concept, and it’s something I hope to see someday.

This model Solar System reminds me of what John Derbyshire calls the “old, weird America.”  The United States is a vast country, with huge regional differences, even within States.  Just look at barbecue, for example:  there is no uniform way to prepare it in the South.  By “barbecue,” I specifically mean pulled pork barbecue, and being from western South Carolina, we like a mustard-based sauce for ours.  In North Carolina, its vinegar-based.  Other States use—horrors!—ketchup-based sauces.

The point is not to get you hungry—although my mouth is watering—but to give one example of how even in the tiniest details, we Americans are an incredibly varied bunch.  One major source of the American Civil War that is often overlooked is the sheer differences between Northerners and Southerners in their respective outlooks about the world itself, much less all the political and economic disagreements.

The Maine Solar System Model is a great example of that kind of weird, localized boosterism.  It also harkens back to a time before everything was built to look like a Brutalist J.C. Penney’s.

With that, here is 8 June 2023’s “TBT: Touring the Solar System in Rural Maine“:

I’ve been on an outer space kick lately, especially with all my posts about Saturn.  As such, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to look back at this little post from 2019—one of my favorites!

Surprisingly, I’d never bothered to reblog this one in the nearly four years since it was first published.  It’s about a model Solar System in the State of Maine, The Maine Solar System Model (the website for which has gotten a facelift since 2019).  It’s been on my traveling “to do list” ever since I learned about it on Quora.

With that, here is 24 September 2019’s “Touring the Solar System in Rural Maine“:

Regular readers know that I love localism, and communities coming together to solve problems—or even just to throw fun festivals.  I also enjoy learning about space and our Solar System.

So I was thrilled to read an interesting Quora answer to a question about the scale of the Solar System that combined easily digestible math with a statewide Solar System project.  The question, paraphrased, is thus:  if Earth were the size of a golf ball, how big would the Solar System, etc., be?

The answer, from contributor Jennifer George, a self-described “Bibliomaniac” and “Information Omnivore,” also paraphrased, is simple:  travel up Highway 1 in the State of Maine.

According to Ms. George, the project began in 1998 and was completed in 2003.  It’s known as The Maine Solar System Model, and it still sports a website from the early, Wild West days of the Internet (it looks like an Angelfire or Geocities website).  Ms. George writes that the model is 95 miles in length, with a scale of 1:93,000,000 miles (93 million miles is an Astronomical Unit, or AU, and is the distance between the Earth and the Sun).  It starts in northern Aroostook County, Maine with a 50-foot Sun, and ends in Houlton, Maine with a one-inch Pluto (according to Bing! Maps, the distance from Presque Isle and Houlton is only 41.9 miles, so her 95-mile claim may be inaccurate).

The project is maintained with volunteer labor from local Maine companies.  Ms. George helpfully supplied a link to a news article about the repainting of the large Jupiter model.  Maine’s harsh winters eroded Jupiter’s vibrant colors, including the infamous Great Red Spot, and the fiberglass construction required from repairs.

The Sun is located in Presque Isle, Maine, with Mars at the town’s welcome sign.  That gives you a sense for the proximity of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars.  Jupiter is just north of a town called (appropriately) Mars Hill.  The planets then become much more distant, and quickly.

One day, I’d like to get up to Maine to see this model.  Really, I’d just like to get up to Maine for a variety of reasons—it’s beautiful New England countryside, Stephen King makes it sound super creepy, etc.  Also, the home county of The Maine Solar System Model, Aroostook County, is also the namesake of the long-forgotten Aroostook War, a bloodless (other than two black bear attacks) border conflict between Maine and Canadian lumberjacks over the amorphous, disputed northern border.

Until that day comes, it’s South Carolina festivals for me.  But one day I’ll reach for the stars—or, at least, the fiberglass planets of northeastern Maine.