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Politicians, a world-wide problem

After spending huge sums of public money, building the Curiosity Mars Rover craft, transporting it through space and gently lowering it onto the surface of the red planet, it now sits idle -- waiting on a bunch of dim-bulb politicians to sort their act out.

Yes, our most advanced and exciting space exploration craft is becalmed due to the selfish, myopic "let's throw our toys out of the pram" attitudes of US politicians that have now forced a wide scale shutdown of non-essential state-provided services in the USA.

And of course, since NASA is funded by the US taxpayer and its activities are considered to be non-essential, 97% of its employees won't be at work today.

Unbelievable!

In the wake of the global financial crisis, you'd think that all politicians would be working *together* to try and lift the USA out of the quantitative easing hole it presently finds itself in -- but no.

Ideology and myopia seem as inherent in the US political system as they are here in NZ and, to be honest, in just about every country around the world.

As a result of this, the Curiosity Rover has been switched into "safe mode", a shutdown condition where its systems go into a hibernation-like state, dealing only with aspects of operation that are required to ensure its survival in the harsh Martian environment.

This ridiculous science shutdown comes just days after Curiosity confirmed the presence of water in the Martian soil while also determining that a lack of methane probably means there's little or no microbial life on that planet.

Excuse me USA -- this is some seriously important science here. These are bits of information that are milestones in our exploration of the universe around us.

And let's not forget that Voyager has just left the solar system and is now just starting to send back data about the secrets of interstellar space. This is also super-important stuff that should be the focus of scientific activity -- not something that is shelved while a bunch of over-paid, over-fed politicians bicker like children in a kindergarten playground.

As regular readers will know, I have little time for most politicians and consider them to be a burden on society rather than a benefit to it. The US government shutdown does nothing to change that opinion.

To be honest, one can't help but get the impression that the difference between government and monarchy is that at least monarchs are occasionally benevolent.

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