NASA-the guys who fly to Mars and stuff- will, apparently, develop a video game of their own. And they will do this at your expense, to be more exact, they will take money out of your taxes.

According to beyondunreal.com, NASA's Learning Technologies Office got some money to develop a NASA-based game. For the time being, they are planning to develop a prototype game, which will last about 10 to 20 minutes. They are collaborating with America's Army development team and the Federation of American Scientists and they will use Epic's Unreal 3 engine.

Trough this game's prototype, they plan to make people more familiar with space exploration, and introduce them into NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. NASA has big plans for the future, their goal being to go back to the moon by 2025, and to get a human on Mars by 2035.

The Unreal 3 engine was designed specially for DX9 and next-gen consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3. Epic has used it to develop Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007. Considering the great detail in Gears of War, I guess it's safe to say that NASA's game will be a spectacular one, but I don't understand why they have to develop it on taxpayers' expense.