Brace yourself for this…

Earlier this year the words To understand and protect our home planet were quietly omitted from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission statement. In their place is some vague mandate to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

If one considers the many tons of hardware NASA has hoisted into orbit bristling with cameras, spectral analyzers, infra-red scanners, laser locaters and snappy little blue emblems; and one considers the invaluable information provided by all this stuff about Earth’s ocean currents, wind patterns, water reservoirs, melting ice caps, carbon dioxide densities, and ozone holes; and one also considers how utterly absurd it would be to drop understanding and protecting our home planet from the job description of the people best suited to the task, then one comes to a single conclusion: This is not our home planet.

Take a minute if you need it. This was hard on me at first too, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. Like canny children who always suspected they were adopted and are not surprised when their real parents turn out to be wizards – or at least cooler than the parents they have – this will not be a shock to all of us.

Judging by what happens during a lifetime on this rock to our skins, muscle tone, and lower lumbar regions alone, it is plain to see we are not designed to live in Earth’s environment for the long haul. There must be a daintier, more softly lit water bearing paradise somewhere and we’ve simply lost track of it. We know this in our heart of hearts and always have.

Every human culture throughout history has come up with a creation myth to explain the pickle we are in. Nine times in ten the story goes down this way: People and animals lounging together in a dainty, softly lit paradise, fruit and vegetables fairly dripping into our mouths, and then some smart aleck goes and starts a fire or eats an apple and the next thing you know we’re all living in New Jersey.

Being on Earth is a form of punishment. That’s how we’ve always framed it. The Bible is full of this stuff. Job 7:1 informs us Does not man have hard service on earth? Are not his days like those of the hired man? Yes, and with no minimum wage increase since Noah laid off the crew from the Ark.

The simmering animosity at the root of this sentiment could well explain our collective inability to take care of the place. Mother Earth has become more like the annoying aunt everybody loves to hate. She has all these conditions she won’t shut up about and she always manages to rain on the parade. How many hours in a day does modern broadcasting devote to reporting bad weather and natural calamity? If we spent that amount of time parsing the complexities of deep space travel, we’d be home by now.

This is a reasonable and good explanation for NASA’s change of focus, and I’m all for it. Why continue to collect even more unpleasant facts about our current lease on life when we could be working on getting back to where we belong?

President Bush declared in January 2004 that we would be putting men back on the moon and sending some to Mars as well. The announcement was so apropos of nothing at the time it didn’t last two days in the news cycle. You can’t blame people. We know Mars is not our place. The gravity might be more agreeable, but face it, -100 degree carbon dioxide as an atmosphere would make an L.A. rush hour smell like a breath of fresh air.

But, Mars is a good place to practice for the trip back to the true mother planet wherever she is. If anybody is in a position to find it, it’s NASA. So point all those cameras and scanners out to the stars and keep your eyes peeled for a familiar blue ball. Forget about all those atmospheric studies. Go to work on some warp drives and we’ll soon be blasting off right through that hole in the ozone, and into the arms of our long lost cousins. That is, if they’ll have us back once they see what we’ve done to the rental.