Try searching Google Trends for the term SpaceX and click on the cities tab in the results. The denizens of Huntsville, Alabama, on a normalized basis, search for the term about 5 times more often than those in Los Angeles. Here are the top 10 cities...
| 1. | Huntsville United States |
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| 2. | Los Angeles United States |
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| 3. | Washington United States |
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| 4. | Irvine United States |
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| 5. | San Francisco United States |
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| 6. | Houston United States |
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| 7. | Seattle United States |
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| 8. | Atlanta United States |
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| 9. | London United Kingdom |
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| 10. | Chicago United States |
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I probably skewed the numbers for Washington. ;-) Not surprisingly, South Africans search for SpaceX much more than anybody else, since Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, is a native son.
Here's an interesting comparison of SpaceX with Blue Origin. Blue is SpaceX and red is Blue Origin.
| 1. | Huntsville United States |
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| 2. | Los Angeles United States |
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| 3. | Washington United States |
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| 4. | Irvine United States |
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| 5. | San Francisco United States |
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| 6. | Houston United States |
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| 7. | Seattle United States |
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| 8. | Atlanta United States |
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| 9. | London United Kingdom |
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| 10. | Chicago United States |
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Maybe the search volume for those queries is so low that one event can skew the results significantly. Maybe some school in Huntsville gave all students an assignment to write about SpaceX which made hundreds of kids look it up many times, while in normal circuimstances only a small number of enthusiasts would have done so.
Posted by: Šimun Selak | May 13, 2006 at 07:16 AM
Actually, my post was tongue-in-cheek. Huntsville is of course, Rocket City, USA and the home of American manned spaceflight.
Huntsville has thousands of jobs to lose if SpaceX is successful, so there may be lot of people looking over their shoulders at SpaceX. But a more innocent explanation is that Huntsville just is very interested in rocketry and searches accordingly.
Los Angeles is the home of SpaceX and much aerospace industry besides. Washington is the home of the agencies that are SpaceX's biggest customers.
Posted by: Daniel Schmelzer | May 13, 2006 at 09:11 PM
I thought Huston is rocket city. Much I don't know about USA :-)
Posted by: Šimun Selak | May 14, 2006 at 06:08 AM
Similar. Houston is "Space City."
Huntsville, Alabama was the home of the German rocketry team under von Braun that was so instrumental in our early space efforts, including Apollo.
Posted by: Daniel Schmelzer | May 14, 2006 at 04:24 PM
I could be skewing Huntsville, as I post news update everyday on such things :)
Posted by: Dan Schrimpsher | May 15, 2006 at 12:31 PM