To Earth: Return

: After months in the sterile, quiet vacuum of space, astronauts often find Earth to be heavy, loud, and strangely still.

For real-world explorers, returning to Earth is a grueling physical and sensory experience. Return to Earth

: Jim Harrison’s novel Returning to Earth uses the phrase as a metaphor for facing mortality and family history within a Native American cultural context. : After months in the sterile, quiet vacuum

: Alien or human voyagers return after 500,000 years to find that Earth’s "primitive" inhabitants have advanced beyond expectations . : Alien or human voyagers return after 500,000

: Astronauts return to a post-catastrophic Earth (e.g., after 300 years of extreme tsunamis) to see if it can support human life again .

: To "come back down to earth" is an idiom for dealing with reality after a period of excitement or dreaming.

: Some develop a "long stare," finding it difficult to relate to earthly life after witnessing the planet's fragile beauty from above. 3. Literary and Figurative Returns