🇱🇦How big is Laos, really?

Laos on Mercator, 1.11 times too large.

The number is not an opinion. We take the outline of Laos from Natural Earth, project it with the Mercator formula and with the Equal Earth formula on a unit sphere, and divide the two planar areas. Equal Earth is exactly equal-area, so the ratio is the factor by which Mercator inflates the country. For Laos it is 1.11. A country on the equator would give 1.00; Greenland gives 16.5.

Compared with Greenland, the usual reference: the true ratio of Laos to Greenland is 1 : 9.4. You can see both on the interactive map, switch to Mercator, and watch the ratio change.

Countries of the same size, and countries that only look the same.

The country closest to Laos in true area is Romania (235,769 km²).

On a Mercator map Laos looks about the same size as Uruguay (177,565 km²), which is drawn at 1.42 times its true size. The map makes two countries of different sizes look alike.

Population, economy, and how they are changing.

Figures from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). Each value shows the year it refers to. Where an indicator is missing for this country, the row is absent rather than estimated.

Satellites this country owns.

Counted from the CelesTrak satellite catalogue by owner: payloads currently in orbit, those operational, and every payload ever launched. Satellites owned by international organisations or by two countries jointly are not counted for any country. Positioning satellites are from KUON GEO's own catalogue.

KUON GEO · /sat →

Every country

The same page for each of the 177 countries in the dataset, in seven languages.