When Homer learns that Ned Flanders has been raising a flock of chickens in a backyard coop, he and Bart begin stealing the eggs they lay.
The family finds a company called Exploration Incorporated that will take in the chickens, as part of a corporate-sponsored research project to establish space flight to Mars.
All of the males are dismissed at the end of the week for their slovenliness and stupidity; Marge, on the other hand, proves to be highly skilled at the required tasks due to her experience as a homemaker and mother.
She and Lisa are both chosen as finalists, leading to a heated confrontation between the two, while Homer and Bart offer vague support and reflect on their own dysfunctional history.
Paul and Barry, the project leaders, announce that a rival company is close to completing its preparations to go to Mars and move the initial launch up to Thursday.
Paul and Barry admit that the launch was a fake, intended both to inspire a new generation and to create a distraction so they could abandon the project and flee; however their car has failed to start.
Not daring enough to go for broke (and not hilarious enough to pull that off), it, instead, settles for a human story with a couple of lousy lessons...'The Marge-ian Chronicles' dances around the possibility of tossing Marge and Lisa up into space too, then backs away, then seems prepared to go for it, before the anticlimactic rug-pulling that the corporate-funded private space exploration concern Exploration Incorporated never had the knowhow to send people to Mars in the first place.