WISE data, Water MASERs, and Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rockets Oh my! (Also a shout out to UsUncut, and UkUncut. Fighting Corporate Tax Dodgers for the good of the world.)

Alright everyone, welcome to the internet and day two of this years go at keeping 'Future in the Rough' as a blog. Also I plan on choosing a day of the week (after I find the usb cable for my camera.) where I can start posting a video blog entry.. just got to get a backdrop, set up a corner of the room as a studio and bam. It should be fun, and it'll be a convenient segue into showing off the all the work I want to do with film this year.

So I'm excited about this. The Weekly video will be a little saner than my usual blog posts probably because I'll be attempting to make a bit of sense, versus this Half-venting half-informative political, and science blog. So I'll try and talk about a few more relevant issues, but mainly a lot of what I find to be underplayed news. But we'll come to that when I get around to implementing it. (within a week.)

I did a lot of crazy fuck the police rants yesterday so let's change the pace a bit and open up with NASA's first payload of Visual Data from the WISE skymapping spacecraft, which scanned the entire night sky in the infrared spectrum. The project revealed among other barely radioactive beauties in the night sky 19 NEO (Near Earth Objects) which warrant higher concern to the earth due to size and proximity of orbit. I know this sounds alarming but I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'

Here is a link to a popsci.com article discussing what I found to be particularly interesting. Rather, perhaps beautiful is a better word to describe my fascination with the article's topic being what they call 'Cosmic water fountains' found within our own Milky way Galaxy. Technically what they are talking about is the presence of large cosmic clouds of water particles traveling at speeds of up to 350 km per second. These are objects are identified as 'Water Fountains' a type of 'Maser' which is a large Microwave laser signal. Masers of this particular nature can be found in nebulae wherein there is active star formation, or surrounding a dying star. The water in the molecular clouds absorb, amplify and re-emit the present energy to give off the microwave laser signals which indicate their locations.

I know, kind of an old concept cleaned up by new data. Hydrocarbons are among some of the most simple, and abundant baryonic substances in our visible known universe by current understanding. However, the concept of cosmic sized water clouds being flung into intra-galactic space. It not only sounds beautiful, but stands as a beacon to the availability of resources needed for our concepts of habitation. I find that touching, in that Carl Sagan sort of way.

Finally back to NASA before I jump off here for a quick break before going into my daily thoughts on politics. This is a link to a very exciting conceptual engine which they have been experimental since 1977 but starting this year, is being prepared to test on the ISS in 2014. A Plasma drive orbital adjustment engine. So I'm sure you are either confused and excited, or not-confused because you read the link and excited... or not-confused and unexcited (which I call secret confused.) So I'll Assume all three and get more specific. It's called the Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rocket. VASIMR. The linked PDF here shows on page 25, and in much further detail beforehand in the PDF if you are curious enough to check it out, there are some projections for the range of time we could develop these solar powered, plasma propelled craft as solar efficiency rises and they are able to use higher MW engines. The difference between the 500kw engine that will be tested on the ISS later this year and theoretical 2.5MW engine hauling similar crafts with equal fuel weights is 1557 days at 500kw (this engine will just be to correct ISS orbit from time to time at drastically lower fuel cost.) compared to 426 days with a 2.5MW engine. In terms of months as the table shows that is 52 months over 14 months. At current the competitors for engine models remain largely Nuclear, and Chemical rockets. Cost Efficiency and speed are the two driving forces which could propagate this engine in today's inter-political, or commercial space market.

Before I go I'd like to leave a link to UsUncut's website US uncut is the sister affiliate of UKuncut. UsUncut started by Carl Gibson of Mississippi, who was influenced by the decentralized protest against corporate tax evasion in the UK known as UkUncut; is working hard to get the word out against the same corporate tax evasion taking place in the united states. Bank of America, Verizon, FedEx, GE, and BP are major targets of UsUncut for their individual crimes of tax evasion. In this aspect the US movement still mirrors the UK movement as they shine the same light on more European situated companies such as Vodafone, Boots, Sir Philip Green, Tesco and supermarket brands, as well as large UK banks.