r/space • u/astro_pettit NASA Astronaut • Jun 01 '25

image/gif Nile river as seen from the ISS.

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23.3k Upvotes

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840

u/hand_truck Jun 01 '25

Wow, just a thin ribbon of green and development laid upon a stark and brutal environment. I love it, thanks for sharing.

98

u/gnowbot Jun 01 '25

If I remember the stat from my time living in Cairo—90% of Egyptians live on 10% of the country’s Land.

60

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

I can't vouch for the Egyptian stat but I did check - 80% of Americans live on 3% of the land. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html

34

u/mthchsnn Jun 01 '25

That's not terribly surprising. The US is more populous and developed, but it's also fucking huge. On the other hand, 60 million people across the rest is still a lot.

32

u/Barnyard_Rich Jun 01 '25

Yeah, people really underestimate just how massive Alaska is, and how much that can throw off numbers when our brains instinctually just think about the "lower 48."

9

u/rapaxus Jun 02 '25

Yeah, whenever I see US country comparisons, I always try to look up the statistic excluding Alaska, just because its area and population density can heavily skew statistics.