A new press release from NASA has informed the public that a new planet, with identical atmospheric and life-sustaining conditions as our planet, has been found in our own solar system. Scientists were shocked to find the planet right under our noses, and claim that it has gone unnoticed while they were focusing their attentions on uninhabitable planets millions of light-years away.
NASA scientists are led to believe that this new Earth has slightly elevated green house gas levels, not much unlike our planet had in post-Industrial Revolution times. The NASA terra-forming specialists are already making plans to transform this new planet’s atmosphere into a more habitable and sustainable environment, and these urgent plans are being approved by NASA executives and US government officials in record time, as the scientists believe that the steadily increasing greenhouse gases will pose a problem for future habitation of the planet
“There is also a possibility that the planet is inhabited by beings not much unlike those found on Earth, although we do not believe they are intelligent.” Chief NASA planetary scientist, Ulrich Mars, commented. “We will, however, be rerouting funding from all other projects currently searching for life in the Universe, in places where we will never be able to get to with any current technology, to find intelligent life on this new Earth. If we don’t find intelligent life, we will proceed in educating the population of this new planet.”
He continued to add “It will be a lot cheaper to transform this planet’s atmosphere and to resolve its current environmental crises, than to send manned missions to Mars. We have been spending so much of our funding on missions where we have a one in two thousand chance of succeeding, where we have a one-in-one chance of succeeding here.”
“We are also abandoning all future plans to get surveying equipment to Mars, as there is no life there, and billions are being spent to just have a look around for signs that liquid water once flowed over the surface. We also believe that rerouting funding from all Mars projects and applying it to save a planet with life, from environmental destruction, is a wiser move, as there is no point in trying to get people to Mars when it will be easier to reverse catastrophic atmospheric conditions, on a planet with an environment so close to ours.”
NASA executives and US government officials also plan to divert a small portion of the funding (approximately US$6b) to helping hungry children and suffering economies on our own Earth. “It is a sign of goodwill NASA wishes to convey to the citizens of Earth, as we have sent countless probes and units into space and nearby planets, and overlooked the suffering of our own people, on our own home planet.” Senior Executive Prof. John Adams McKay said on Friday.
NASA wishes to repair its reputation of money-wasting space-obsessed Trekkies by showing that they have changed their priorities. “No more will we be wasting billions of tax payers’ dollars on a one in one billion-billion chance of finding the vaguest signs of life in a far-off solar system, but we will rather be applying the money to save the one-in-one chance of life we have found here on Earth.” By doing so, the US government also aim to make up for their lack of care and their ignorance for not signing the Kyoto accord.
Economists estimate that by spending 40% of all Mars missions’ funding on renewable energy, the entire continent of Europe can be powered by a fraction of solar and wind energy produced in Saharan Africa, and the improvement of trade and industry based on the new deployment of infrastructure, will empower and uplift the impoverished people in the Third World, and at the same time provide a source of cheap, renewable, and environmentally friendly energy to the First World.
Many academics and specialists believe that we will never be able to “migrate” or inhabit other planets in our solar system (like Mars), as our Earth will no be able to sustain life any more, by the time the other planets are ready for habitation. Focus is being shifted to rather reversing the damage us humans have done to our planet, rather than sending a hand-full of astronauts into space at the cost of a small country’s debt. Many critics believe that the effort, research, development, and finding which is currently going in to developing intra-planetary vehicles, should rather be focused on improving vehicle battery or hydrogen engine technologies. NASA aims to scrap their missions to the Moon, as there really isn’t anything there.
What remains to be seen now is if NASA and the US government will carry these plans through, or if they will get stuck in their pride and “honour”-driven mentality and beat other countries to a planet which is uneconomical to terra-form, and stay in their delusions of grandeur while the people on their own planet are suffering, and trying to survive the environmental catastrophes brought on by climate change.
(This is a satirical article. The events, comments, and statements are fictional, except the delusional mentality of NASA. That is entirely accurate.)
