April 4, 2008

Virgle: Settling on Mars, Not Such a Crazy Idea

On April 1st, Google and Virgin announced their joint effort to begin colonizing Mars. On their project website, the apparent consortium was named "Virgle" (Virgin + Google just in case you didn't guess). On the homepage, Google declaired:

"For thousands of years, the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision." - Virgle mission statement

So it is for this reason we should think about a "Plan B", leave Earth and settle on Mars:

"An invitation. Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars." - Virgle mission statement

Virgle's main priority is to assemble a team of volunteers (you could apply online after filling out a light-hearted questionnaire) to create the first manned mission to Mars. But this manned mission would have one fundamental difference: it would be funded by two multi-billion dollar corporations. I mean, it's not hard to believe that a company might have an interest in space; Virgin Galactic is currently building their Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo for fee-paying customers to fly tourists into space by 2009. For a cool $200,000 you can reserve your ticket into space - Virgin has already sold tens of millions of dollars-worth of tickets.

Virgil is different, you can volunteer to help out, the "average man" can climb on board and be sent to Mars to help establish a Mars base... but hold on, there's a problem. It's April 1st, Google are known for their jokes, but surely Richard Branson isn't in on it as well? Yes, actually he is.

April Fools was alight with subtle jokes, elaborate pranks and untrue news with a serious edge, but the Virgle stunt was probably the biggest. I even had a go on the Universe Today space news website with a Mars-based article: "NASA to Burn Sponsor Logos on Mars", but it wasn't quite as elaborate as the Virgle project...

But is it actually that far fetched? The Mars Foundation has advanced designs for temporary and permanent bases, we are already in the advanced planning a designing phases. Our Hillside Base is in its final stages and our forthcoming Plains Base will be announced soon. Perhaps Google and Virgin have done something rather clever... could this be the biggest anti-April Fools ever? Read on...

As not-so-subtly revealed in Virgle's error page, Virgle isn't real, it's an April Fools prank. So are Virgin and Google really poking fun at Mars settlement plans? No, they've just thought up what would have been one of the biggest corporate projects in mankind's history, setting up a manned outpost on Mars. If they wanted our attention, they certainly got it.

Interestingly, when reading the faked "error page", one word in particular stands out: "Yet."

I don't think we should get too carried away in the hope that some incarnation of Virgle is being planned, but one can't help but wonder whether this corporate spearheading of manned exploration has actually been discussed. The Virgle prank is almost too clever. Watching the videos below, Richard Branson gives a spine-tingling, polished rundown about what he expects from such an audacious project:

Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are obviously enjoying the prank as they giggled through their not-so-polished presentation:

The fact remains that the Mars Foundation and other established organizations are planning advanced settlement designs. Perhaps all we need are the likes of Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Richard Branson to fund a permanent human presence on another planet after NASA has developed the technology to get us there...

As for Virgle:

Many a true word hath been spoke in jest.
[c 1665 in Roxburghe Ballads (1890) VII. 366]

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