Google Founders Get Exclusive Landing Strip

NASA has quietly cut a deal with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who will get to park their Boeing 767-200 widebody jet, as well as two other Google jets, at NASA's Moffett Field in the heart of Silicon Valley. The price tag of that parking space? $1.3 million.

NASA says that the deal includes the right to put scientific instruments and researchers aboard the plane and collect data during some flights of the 767 and two Gulfstream Vs. No other private jets are permitted to use the airfield, which was transferred from the Navy to NASA in 1992.

"It was an opportunity for us to defray some of the fixed costs we have to maintain the airfield as well as to have flights of opportunity for our science missions," Steven Zornetzer, associate director for institutions and research at the Ames Center, told the New York Times. "It seemed like a win-win situation."

Where Will It Stop?

It doesn't seem win-win to Lenny Siegel, a community activist and director of a small nonprofit called the Pacific Studies Center. The nearby communities of Sunnyvale and Mountain View, California, "have no particular problem with Google," he said. "It's the idea that if you let in one plane or three planes, where will it stop?"

When private organizations forge relationships with NASA that are related to the space agency's mission, "there's no opposition to that," Siegel said, provided the activity doesn't create unwanted traffic or noise pollution. For instance, Carnegie Mellon University has set up a campus at Moffett Field and Google has plans to lease as much as a million square feet at the site.

But the deal for the Google planes appears to be purely a commercial relationship, Siegel said. What about the placement of scientific instrumentation onboard? "I don't know why you would have a...