 How is Earth perceived in this story?
But with the Procyon shuttle arriving yesterday, there was no telling what might turn up. They found it drifting half a light-year out and captured it. For eighty years now, they’d been sending out the little ships that vanished at greater than the speed of light, equipped with every conceivable device to make them return automatically after taking pictures of wherever they arrived. The little ship apparently had been picked up by accident when it almost collided with a Sirius-local ship. Scientists there had puzzled over it, reset it and sent it back. Harry had been born just before Earth passed the drastic birth limitation act and his mother had spoiled him. GILES SNORTED and turned to the third frame, which showed a group picture of the family in some sort of vehicle, against the background of an alien but attractive world. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties; sentiment wore thin in half a century—which wasn’t much time now, though it had once seemed long enough. It was enough like an old model Earth conveyance to pass casual inspection, but it floated wheellessly above the ground. Faint blur lines indicated it had been moving when the picture was taken. Earth was becoming a backwater world; no real progress had been made in two centuries; the young men were sent out as soon as their first fifty years of education were finished, and the older men were too conservative for really new thinking. That missile reached Sirius in less than ten days. It took two accidents to get the thing back to us—and with a half-light-year miss that delayed it about twenty years before the Procyon shuttle heard its signal. Pre-setting a course may take centuries, if we can ever master it. Even with Sirius expecting the missiles and ready to cooperate. Maybe in two centuries we’d have a through route charted to Sirius. Usually it was too easy to realize that, and the sight of the solid, time-enduring buildings outside should have given him a sense of security. Like an automaton, he bent forward, his other hand groping for the mirror that should be in one of the drawers. Dubbins was at his side almost at once, with a hand under his arm to guide him toward his suite. After all, there was nothing to worry about; Earth’s doctors could cure anything. He left a year ago to visit a son in the Centauri system.
 it is a weaker planet now because few discoveries are taking place there
 it's run by an intelligent, motivated Council  it is a weaker planet now because few discoveries are taking place there  it's in the center of all of the other planets, so it's visited often  people want to live there, as it's the richest planet