Project Virgle

I had forgotten about one of Google's prior April Fool's Jokes: Project Virgle. The idea was that Google and Virgin were teaming up to send a team of colonists to the Martian surface to establish the first human settlement outside our world.

It was a well done prank, with both Richard Branson and Larry/Sergey making youtube videos promoting the project. The funny thing about Project Virgle is that you'd think at least Branson would be interested in actually pursuing something like this. Furthermore, the sobering reality is that at our current rate, a wealthy private venture is the only way we're going to see human footsteps on the Martian (or lunar, for that matter) surface within the next 20 years. It took the US only 8 years to go from basically no rocket technology to landing humans on the moon, yet now our Constellation program is being redrawn from scratch. It seems hoping for China to return to space with astronauts is our best bet.

Unless....

What if Google, Microsoft, Virgin, and various other incredibly wealthy companies decided to try? What if you gathered $10 billion from across these behemoths and put them towards a single goal of actually colonizing the moon and Mars? You put the brightest silicon valley types you can at the helm who need to do it as frugally as possible, but still pay them good salaries and even equity -- perhaps the ultimate financial goal is mining lunar helium-3 or another exotic mineral? $10 billion should be fine, hell it only took the X-Prize winners $25 million to get their spacecraft into sub-orbital flight. I'm sure Paul Allen would be on board with funding this too, you just need a particularly wealthy and charismatic person like Richard Branson to get the ball rolling.

I think I may have to send Richard Branson an email...