A panel of experts unveiled seven earth-sized planets only 235,145,014,927,344 miles from Earth (where we live), three of which may posses the proper conditions for Pokemon.
This is only the latest milestone in an ongoing search to identify alien governments that may be more willing to fund NASA’s budget than the U.S. government.
“It’s immensely exciting,” said Jane Kranston, an accountant at NASA:
“Ever since they cut funding for toilet seats, we’ve been incredibly motivated to diversify our funding across the Universe. Even the Multiverse if that’s what it takes. Just imagine that somewhere out there is a parallel Universe in which NASA has all its funding and we’ve already terraformed Saturn.”
With a budget that has dropped a staggering 96% since its peak in the 1960s, NASA now has to rely more on private space industry. But even this strategy is not without its detractors. Dean Shmumer, a White House advisor explains that budgets come down to dollars and cents:
“Consider the cost of one SpaceX flight to the ISS. We have to pay $133 million of taxpayer money for that. Meanwhile, we could send the President to Florida thirteen times for the same cost. How could we justify wasting Americans’ hard-earned money on a joyride into space?”
Meanwhile, Kranston and crew watch with anticipation to see what kind of civilizations might inhabit these other worlds:
“A big indication to us will be unorthodox gender roles,” she explains. “We’ve been told by some of our top scientists that there is a strong correlation between cultures in which gender roles are loosely defined and a willingness to fund mass exodus from a planet. If we can find a single dad doing dishes and expertly tracking his children’s developmental milestones on just one of these planets, then our chances of receiving the funding we need will increase exponentially.”
There is some concern about exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and various intergalactic coinages, credits, or whuffie. But Kranston and others at NASA are confident the American people will be ready to submit to new alien overlords and adopt a new currency if it means getting a few clearer pictures of the M81 galaxy.
For now, passionate NASA employees can only cling to the faith that a government somewhere out there is amicable to space exploration.