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Google Founder Offer $33M For Use of NASA Airship Hangar
theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that NASA is considering an offer from Google's billionaire founders to provide '100 percent' funding to save Hangar One. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt have, through a company they control, proposed paying the full $33 million cost of revamping Hangar One, once home to the Navy's giant airships at Moffett Field, in return for use up to two-thirds of the floor space of the hangar to house their fleet of eight private jets. In October, the Googlers struck an agreement with NASA Ames calling for the use of their 'co-located' Alpha fighter jet to, among other things, help NASA mitigate wildfires and study global warming."
Wonder if they've asked to put google advertising on the sides of the airships....
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Mythbusters... Where are they going to perform their experiments if most of the hangar is full of planes?
Will this end up being another government subsidy for people who don't need it or will there be a real lease involved?
I guess that's one thing that X-COM UFO Defense got wrong. X-COM's not trying to get funding from the countries: they're trying to get funding from the companies.
I love that term 'considering offer'. Because I picture NASA employees secretly partying with bottles of champagne behind the scenes.
The "private jets" could just be a cover story.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
If you were wondering what the Google boys have been drinking a lot of lately, maybe that's Red Bull.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alpha_Jet_-_Red_Bull_-_ILA2002.jpg
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
For the Highest Fliers, New Scrutiny: Messrs. Page and Brin, the Google co-founders, operate at least four aircraft registered under various companies that aren't connected to Google, FAA and other aviation records show: a Boeing 767, a Boeing 757, plus two Gulfstream G-V's. During the four-year period, the jets' most frequent destinations outside of their northern California base were Los Angeles, New York and Washington. For last year's eclipse-viewing journey, the 767 and a Gulfstream V each made two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti. Those flights used an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and in total cost upwards of $430,000, according to calculations by Conklin & de Decker Aviation Information. The research firm is hired by some public companies to provide aircraft-cost estimates for regulatory filings. A Google spokeswoman confirmed that the Tahiti journey was for the eclipse, saying the pair brought a group with them on the planes. Messrs. Page and Brin have mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets, she said. They also frequently lend their planes for philanthropic and scientific missions.
I'm more concerned that google effectively has a fighter jet.
I suspect it's a bit more convoluted. The shell company that technically owns the jets and that will be using 2/3rds of the hangar has an odd relationship with NASA, refurbishing old jets, from small fighters to Boeing 767's, and turning them into "science" planes. It's more like this company is subsidizing the government. Sort of.
That "sort of" is what's intriguing. The jets are being refurbished, thanks to a massive pool of unaudited money, for vague "science" missions. The closest thing that comes to mind is Hughes and his odd relationship with the government: that entanglement produced the Glomar Explorer ostensibly for deep-sea mineral research but really for a CIA program to recover a Soviet submarine. The Google-NASA public-private partnership for "science" or "research" may be a way of hiding expensive and highly experimental espionage programs from auditors by keeping programs off the public books. The flights so far have included "observation" of a returning ESA space vehicle, so they have the capability to monitor signals from an inbound object; maybe also satellites? If you think all this sounds a bit paranoid, consider that Google and the CIA have some similar investment interests.
This is the story of rich google founders using their money to buy the right to fly their planes into Moffet field airport at any hour of the night.
This company isn't really subsidizing the government at all, basically they are just causing more noise pollution at Moffet field and not paying any of the commercial airport landing/parking fees.
This is just another example of how rich folks don't pay their fair share of taxes (e.g., SJC landing fees) and don't have to follow the rules of the little guys have to follow (e.g., have to pay a fine for violating the SJC late-night landing curfew used to abate noise for nearby residents).
How 'bout they offer to pay all the landing fees to SJC that they *would* have had to pay and then pop for the $33M? At least then they wouldn't be acting as tax evaders (guess who has to make up for the fees that they don't pay to SJC airport, the other 99%-ers, yet they tie up the same air-traffic control resources and cause the same late-night noise pollution).
99%-ers meet your 1%-ers (aka googlers)... Bend-over baby :^(
These things are actually surprisingly versatile, some company in Germany built a giant climate controlled tropical resort out of one a few years ago after the collapse of an airship startup.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
So that is the "trickle-down" effect mentioned here ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
That's not that much to spend for the cost savings of having a consolidated location for the fleet. This will significantly decrease the cost of maintenance and upkeep, and if I had to guess, will pay for itself in a very short time.
I went through this same thing on a smaller scale last year when I was finally able to get a large hanger at one airport as opposed to three single hangars at two different airports. Now I only have one hangar bill, one mechanic, and keeping track of everything is much easier.
Was trying to work out why they named there subsidary H211.
Are they referring to the Hydrogen line, which has a wavelength of 21.1cm?
Not a member of the General Public
Geez, do you really have to apply the latest groupthink to everything you say? Blah blah 1% 99% blah blah waaaah somebody give me some money.
which is totally what she said
A lot of the 99% folks you hang out with fly private jets into SJC?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It doesn't even have to be a cover story.
The spacecraft would be privately owned. And "jet" covers any form of propulsion which emits a stream of reaction mass to provide thrust, including rockets and ion engines. (Hence the "Jet" in NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Moffet Field is a 10 minute drive to Google HQ; SJC is a whopping 7 minutes more. More importantly, however, I guess they get to skip the airport security lines, etc. Flying from Moffet is all about convenience and (conspicuously) living it large. What they did to get access to Moffet is a bit of a mystery, but it probably involved deals such as this.
All I can hear is "boo hoo, I'm a top 2% and wish I were a 1% but now I have to pay a little bit more to fly my private jet into SJC now"
Google execs offer $33m to save Nasa's Hangar One
We'll just rename the building to "Hanger One Percent"
Hehe. The funny thing is that most 4channers and Slashdotters will probably be in the top 5% or so when you take the world population into account..
which is totally what she said
Its even more like ultra-rich geeks are spending lots of money on a hobby that happens to align with the objectives of a public agency.
Well, except that the agreements and payments in the partnership are on the public books, rather than off them, and it isn't a NASA-Google partnership, as Google isn't actually involved (a separate company co-owned by people who also happen to be Google executives is.)
There could, of course, be undisclosed payments through the black budget to H211 LLC (the company through which the Googlers own the planes) outside of the NASA partnership, but the same is true of any private venture whether or not it has an overt partnership with a government agency.
And, of course, the purpose of the on-the-books expenditures could be an elaborate deception, but that's true of every other on-the-books government expenditure, too.
I'm concerned about declining government research facilities i.e. NASA. Reason is private companies are profit driven, government is not. Before you all start screaming "damn socialists" you need to realize there was a time which researchers can work on developing new technology and not be concerned with PHB asking for productivity reports. Now we can argue about the goals (i.e. weapons) but looking at NASA's predecessor N.A.C.A. which they had facilities and labs (many at Ames Research Center, it was Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in the days). These facilities housed scientists, engineers, technicians to work on various things too expensive and risky for private companies, it was this work that helped US become a leader in aerospace technology (specifically why NACA was created in 1915). Again we can argue about govt research but look at it this way, if we don't do it someone else will (and they are). At Edwards AFB in the 1950s, Scott Crossfield said of the inventory of the highest flying, fastest flying aircraft, "Not even Howard Hughes has what we have!" Twenty years before, Hughes had the fastest airplane.
Many people argue over govt waste, corporate handouts, and evils of socialism but consider the US has the best airplanes because the research and development was subsidized by the US govt. Heck, other countries do the same. Now there was a time when private companies did research without concern of quarterly profits. Bell labs (the transistor), Xerox Palo Alto (desktop computer with windows and mouse), IBM Almaden (harddrive). But these private research labs are now applied technology centers. I don't really know if Google has a dedicated lab devoted to longterm research and they may not be around long enough.
Speaking of Hanger One, Navy made big use of it when Moffett was active. It housed many P3s which can be serviced and shielded from rain and wind. Airshows they had back then (1980s) had huge turnout of 100,000s and more (admittance was free). Companies along Ellis st got pissed with so many cars parked in their lots but flying demos were impressive and lots of displays even USGS had a display. You can tour P3s and talk with the officers. Amateur radio people provided communications support including amateur TV, I talked with one guy who was on top of Hanger One with his ATV camera, he said he was able to see the planes i.e. Blue Angels fly across right at his eye level. He said was scary climbing up as walkway inside was thin with a single cable on each side.
From a bio of Joseph Ames which ARC was named after, and a true American who put service before self:
from http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001639.html
Ames expected the NACA to encourage engineering education. He pressed universities to train more aerodynamicists, then structured NACA to give young engineers on-the-job training. Ames gave the NACA a focused vision that was research-based and decided that aerodynamics was the most important field of endeavor. Two years later he accepted the Collier Trophy on behalf of the NACA. He kept the NACA alive when Herbert Hoover tried to eliminate it and transfer its duties to industry.
Ames accepted a nomination by Air Minister Hermann Goring to the Deutsche Akademie der Luftfartforschung. Ames then considered it an honor, many Americans did, and was surprised to learn about the massive Nazi investment in aeronautical infrastructure, then six times larger than the NACA. Ames urged the funding for a second laboratory [ at Moffett Field ] and expansion of the NACA facilities to prepare for war.
mfwright@batnet.com
Moffett Field is becoming Google's private airport.
Moffett Field was a former Navy facility, but the Navy moved out years ago, when they stopped patrolling the seas with P-3 Orions. NASA had a presence there because they had a big wind tunnel at Ames. Once the Navy moved out, the place was way underutilized. Parts of the base are leased out to startups, the west coast branch of CMU. The airfield itself is barely used. NASA doesn't do much there. I've been over there for NASA meetings, and the place is dead.
So Page and Brin cut a deal with NASA in 2007 to keep their private planes (their Boeing 767 airliner, etc.) there and use the field. That was controversial at the time, but Moffett was so underutilized that nobody cared.
Hangar One, the big dirigible hanger, has been out of use for years, and there's a "Save Hangar One" group. It's a nice structure; I've been inside it. But it needs work and the Navy doesn't want to maintain it. One of the Austin Powers movies had a scene in Hangar One, which is probably the biggest unused indoor clear space on the planet.
So if the Google guys want to convert it to their lair, that probably won't upset many people locally.
Hehe. The funny thing is that most 4channers and Slashdotters will probably be in the top 5% or so when you take the world population into account..
The US median household income is about $48K. According to http://www.globalrichlist.com/, someone making $48K annually is in the top 0.99% worldwide. So half of Americans are "one-percenters". I think the average well-established (10+ years experience, good track record) software engineer makes over $100K, which puts them in the top 0.66% worldwide.
To make the top 1% in the US (in terms of household income, which isn't the same as wealth), you have to have an annual income in excess of $300K, which puts you on the top 0.001% worldwide.
To be in the top 5% worldwide you need an annual household income of $33,700 or higher. I suspect that very, very few slashdotters who have full-time employment fall below that level.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Those that have jobs, at least :/
Those that have jobs, at least :/
That's why I said "those who have full-time employment".
I do have to wonder a bit about the amount of unemployment angst here. From where I sit the job market for software developers, at least, is very healthy. It's a little tougher for people with little experience, and a little tougher at the more senior end (salary > $120K), but the midrange is almost a seller's market -- and the ends aren't too bad.
But I suppose it's not the same everywhere, and a lot of slashdotters are more "IT guys", rather than developers, and I don't really know anything about that market.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Larry Ellison, is that you?
Re:what about their fair share of taxes and fees?
By flying their plane into Moffett field instead of SJC, they essentially get "free" landing rights and to cause noise pollution w/o creating any offsets.
How 'bout they mitigate their tax evasion and noise pollution by sending the equivalent fees for landing and fines for late landing to the upkeep of SJC airport?
Nah, being the 1% (or maybe the 0.01%), they don't have to bother with rules. Meanwhile the typical SJC flier pays more landing fees (someone has to make up for lost revenue) and they get free noise pollution, without having to pay fines.
99%, wake up, these losers are just taking us all for a ride and with their sweet deal a Moffett, they are the 1%...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison#Private_jet ...it sure sounds like sour grapes over the noise ordinance and fines for violating it.
Moffet's not a Customs Airport of Entry, so any international flights have to bounce through another airport before landing there. For Moffet, that's generally Oakland. So they'd pay the landing fees there.
Also, they have stronger noise restrictions than SJC:
Moffet:
http://www.aviationreferencedesk.com/airport/NUQ/
"NS ABTMT - NO JET DEP RUNWAY 14L/R BTN HRS OF 0700-1300Z++."
Mineta::
http://www.aviationreferencedesk.com/airport/SJC/
"NOISE ABATEMENT PROCEDURE: RUNWAY 30L/12R IS PREFERRED ARRIVAL RUNWAY FOR JET AIRCRAFT AND RUNWAY 12L/30R IS THE PREFERRED DEP RUNWAY FOR JET AIRCRAFT. ALL JET AIRCRAFT TAKEOFFS ARE TO BE INITIATED FROM EOR UNLESS DIRECTED OTHERWISE BY AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TOWER."
-- Terry