NASA has agreed to lease the Moffett Federal Airfield in the San Francisco Bay Area to Google, according to Tech Crunch. The technology giant will pay NASA $1.16 billion over the course of six decades in order to rent the 1,000-acre site, which includes a working airfield, a golf course, and numerous other buildings.
Google made the deal through Planetary Ventures, one of the company’s subsidiaries, which won the ability to negotiate for the airfield earlier this year. Ever since then, Google and NASA have been working out the terms of the agreement, which most people expected to go through, considering Google’s significant interest in acquiring the land and NASA’s equally significant interest in getting rid of it.
“As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement, as quoted by The Verge. “We want to invest taxpayer resources in scientific discovery, technology development and space exploration – not in maintaining infrastructure we no longer need.”
According to USA Today, Google plans to invest more than $200 million into the facility in order to refurbish the hangers and add numerous other improvements, such as an educational facility or a museum that will showcase the airfield’s history, as well as that of Silicon Valley. Planetary Ventures also will use the facility for “research, development, assembly, and testing in the areas of space exploration, aviation, rover/robotics and other emerging technologies.”
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