Right Up Our Alley

By | April 1, 2008

For some reason, it seemes I only have a couple of hours to post this one:

Announcing Project Virgle

Posted by Sir Richard Branson, President and Founder of Virgin Group

In my life, I’ve had a lot of exciting adventures and launched a lot of ambitious business ventures. I’m delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google which qualifies on both counts.

Virgle’s goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it’s high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world.

Pretty big news, eh?

  • Harvey

    I’d like to see some archaeological digs on Mars. I did a drawing of an astronaut uncovering a figurine that looked a bit like an Oscar on Mars; his eyes wide and mouth agape!

  • Stephen Gordon

    Uh, yeah. This is pretty big.

    Google is already involved in a prize to put a rover on the Moon. Obviously this is a much bigger undertaking.

    You can never fault Virgin or Google for not thinking big.

  • Stephen Gordon

    Alas, this is surely an April Fool’s joke.

    But its a joke with a point.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    >>Alas, this is surely an April Fool’s joke.

    Thus my deadline on getting it posted before midnight yesterday! :-)

  • Karl Hallowell

    How about the people who live there now? Astrally, of course. It must be quite a commute to travel to the Earth-side body.