Virgin teams up with Google to announce project Virgle that aims to establish a permanent human settlement on planet Mars.
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.
In the years to come, we'll be sending up a series of spaceships carrying (along with the supplies and tools needed to build the new colony) what eventually will be hundreds of Mars colonists, or Virgle Pioneers -- myself among them. If you think you might want join us (or invest in or otherwise assist this vast venture), I hope you'll read more here about how Virgle will work, what our brave Pioneers can expect and what the future holds for what just might be the most ambitious adventure in mankind's long and storied history.
See you on the north side of Kasei Valles!
Source: From Google Blog
Here's the Virgle Pioneer pitch: Things will get better. Eventually. Sure, the work will be hard, the broadband rates low, the commodes decidedly open source, and yes, your life might be extinguished in a fiery instant of catastrophic technological malfunction. But your enriched descendants will appreciate your sacrifice, which should render worthwhile your choice to spend the rest of your (perhaps radically foreshortened) life in deprivation and uncertainty.
Editor's note: Virgle indeed is a pioneering idea. Good luck to Google and Viring for pushing the boundary of human imagination.
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