14 DAY TRIAL // NASA and Google forged a partnership two years ago and their common goal was to spawn a new era of innovation in Silicon Valley with supercomputing, biotechnology and nanotechnology, the study of extremely small devices.
Despite the two big names involved, both examples of ingenuity and continuous evolving, nothing actually came out of the partnership. Well, not exactly nothing, Verne Kopytoff of The San Francisco Chronicle came up with a list of their accomplishments: -- Google Moon mapping service now has higher-resolution photos. -- Astronauts' photos add pizzazz to Google Earth maps. -- Google is negotiating to build up to 1 million square feet of office space at NASA Ames Research Center. -- The partners are talking about creating virtual flights across the moon and through canyons on Mars. -- Google provided individual grants of $50,000 to $250,000 to support NASA research scientists' work. -- Employees informally brainstorm.
It doesn't look like much, but the things said to come sound interesting. Really interesting: the virtual flights across the moon and through canyons on mars especially. Wouldn't you like to see that? Even if you're not the average UFO fanatic or the mad scientist who would be following these out of sheer interest for proving something, many, including myself, would just kick back and enjoy the show.
In order to encourage the cooperation, NASA employees are being asked for ideas about what they'd like to work on with their Google counterparts.
It looks like a real estate business deal is on its way between the two with Google currently hoping to build up to a million square feet of office space at NASA Ames Research Center, just a few minutes from the company's Mountain View headquarters. Few companies are hiring as fast as Google, which added 2,175 employees during the three months that ended in September, an average of 24 workers per day.
It looks like even though the results have proved quite costly for Google, the partnership is going to endure the test of time. NASA is currently in the middle of talks with Yahoo! for advice about creating a center for innovation just like Yahoo!'s Brickhouse office in San Francisco.