Virgle

Virgle's logo, made by combining the logos of Virgin Group and Google.

Project Virgle, dubbed by Virgin and Google as Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes, was a Google April Fools' joke featured on the main page of Google Search on April 1, 2008. The motto of Project Virgle was, "Things will get better. Eventually".[1]

Setting

The name "Virgle" was a mix of the Virgin Group and Google, and these groups are in fact allies in real life. Virgle is a mission to colonize the planet Mars to make it suitable for human living.

Plan

The Virgle website lays out a plan for colonizing Virgle City on Mars over the next century, or 100 years.

Virgle pioneers

In order to become a Virgle pioneer, one would have had to take the Virgle 15-question quiz. Requirements included the following:

"Applicants" were required to post a 30-second YouTube video as a video response to either of two videos from the Project Virgle YouTube channel. These videos starred Sir Richard Branson on one, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the other. Users were only allowed 24 hours to post a response since the Virgle website was set up. This would not have provided the Virgle Project with enough pioneers, therefore producing another joke.

Virgle City

Mars
Google.com location
Creator Google
Genre Internet hoax
Type Utopian?
Notable locations Virgle City (capital)
Motto Things will get better. Eventually.
Language(s) English?
Currency Mollar

Virgle City would be fully populated by 2108, therefore becoming the supposed capital city of Mars. Virgle shares (VRGL: NASDAQ) would supposedly be sold at 69.32 "Mollars" a share in 2108. The terraforming of Mars would be 89% complete in 2108. Phobos would contain a backup copy of the Internet provided by Google. Immigration is done via more advanced spaceships traveling from Earth to Mars similar to transit.

OpenVirgle

What started as an April Fool joke by Google for 2008 called Project Virgle is now a real and genuine effort by an increasing number of people to create ideas and ways in which mankind can live sustainably in space using free and open source technology. This project is a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate on simulations of space settlements. Rather than argue whether L5, Mars, the asteroids, the Moon or the rings of Saturn should be mankind's first space settlement, we could be asking what is common between those efforts so that that groundwork can be shared.

OpenVirgle is an offshoot of Project Virgle started by the Virgle community. It was intended to be a way to prevent the spamming of the Project Virgle group, as for the most part only people who took the project seriously went to the bother of joining OpenVirgle.

References

External links

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