In 2004, Pres. Bush announced that man will go back to the moon and beyond in the coming decades. Within that year, NASA was successful in landing robots in Mars.
As I can recall, it was also in that year when SpaceShipOne was able to travel in space and won in a competition. For its breakthrough, I later learned that Virgin Group had invested in it and had that ambitious plan of creating space tourism in the near future.
And now, Sir Richard Branson (of Virgin Group), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (of Google) had joined together in a joint-venture, with a mission: "the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars".
The newly launched Virgle Inc. believes 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."
Timeline
2010. The Virgle team will plan to use the Lunae planum area of the north side of Kasei Valles as the Plymouth Rock of the new New World.
2014. The 550-million-mile journey to Mars will begin with 550,000 1/500th-of-a-mile steps, as the LSE3, a multi-stage heavy lifter now under construction using the World War II-era Liberty Ship philosophy and launches the staging components into low earth orbit.
2015. When the Virgle 1 lands, teams of autonomous rovers and assembly platforms will leap into action, building the facilities such as nuclear reactors, Martian Positioning System, Earth return vehicles, Hab modules, production plants, assembly platforms, robotic vehicles, and greenhouses.
2016. The program will begin a synchronized semiannual schedule with human crews. In the five-month voyage to Mars, Virgle Pioneers will experience the same way they enjoy on Earth.
2108. Building the Virgle City.
"We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best... So, you know, it's, like, win-win." says Google co-founder Larry Page.
This is indeed an exciting milestone in our lifetime. Investments will really be huge, but of course, the founders have already considered the risks involved in this project.
And if one will consider the potential benefits, I don't see any limitations for this project not to push through.
reference: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/announcing-project-virgle.html
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