I'm trying to remember the name of a short story that I read some years ago (I think it was by Philip K Dick) where humans had made the Earth uninhabitable and so they set up an observatory to plan a migration to Mars. When they get to Mars, they find an abandoned planet with the same kind of observatory pointing at Earth, showing that humans had already done this before on Mars.
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1Hi, welcome to the site. I edited the title of your question to more clearly reflect the premise I think you're describing. If I misinterpreted it, please do edit the question yourself to correct that. I also removed the Philip K. Dick tag, as you don't seem certain that it's one of his stories, and author tags should only be used for questions specifically asking about the author (rather than one of their works) anyway.– LogicDictatesMay 23 at 20:10
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1 Answer
This is indeed Survey Team by Philip K. Dick. It first appeared in Fantastic Universe May 1954. The story can be read at the Internet Archive.
There is no observatory in the initial part of the story. The surface of the Earth is ruined after thirty years of war, so they go to Mars (as it was thought to be at the time the story was written). They find ruins of an ancient civilization, and one of the team repairs an observatory there. And, indeed...
Carmichael sneered with disgust. "This fool thing must be busted. I wanted to get a look at their dream planet. That's just old Terra, where we came from. All my work trying to fix this wreck up, and what do we see?"
In the ancient times, Mars' resources had been exhausted.
"We've destroyed two worlds," Halloway said at last. "Not one. Mars first. We finished up here, then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars."
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1I think this is where the story was going in "Raised by Wolves" before the series was cancelled. May 24 at 15:30