The 100 year plan includes the following key milestones.

• 2010: Choosing a Site
• 2014: Low Earth Orbit
• 2015: Virgle Base 1
• 2016: Flying to Mars
• 2108: Virgle City

A Virgle website has been setup and contains a well thought out plan including a myriad of information that kept me reading for about an hour. The crux of the concept is that Virgle Inc. will put up $10-15 billion over the next two decades and the community (i.e. normal people like you and me) will help build this New New World into an Open Source Planet.

There is a Virgle application test to see if you cut the grade and afterwards you are invited to submit a short 30-second video clip to YouTube explaining why you should be included in project Virgle. After an undefined period of time Virgle will chose 20 candidates to go with Larry, Sergey and Richard to live on Mars and start the first Virgle community.

All of this just seemed impossible to me but the fact that there are two videos, one with Richard Branson and one with Larry and Sergey, made me doubt my initial instincts. The fact of the matter is that Richard is a space pioneer and Larry and Sergey have already stated their desire to have an office on the Moon so while it seemed completely ludicrous it was believable at the same time.

A search on Google for virgle is it real revealed an odd looking 404 – Page Not Found on the Virgle site. Details of which follow below.

oh, all right. Fine. April Fool’s. Ha, ha, ha. It isn’t real. There. Are you happy? Does it please you to drag us out of our lovely little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams? Is that really what you need to hear? Fine, you’ve heard it. Virgle isn’t real. Yet!

I must say I’ve prided myself with being able to spot the various April Fools jokes on the Internet today but this one got me hook, line and sinker.