Google subsidiary to take over maintenance, improvements at federal airfield

Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures will soon take over the onerous task of maintaining and improving a federal airfield, CNET reports.

The company has been selected by NASA and the US General Services Administration, as the "preferred lessee" to manage Moffett Federal Airfield, located between Mountain View and Sunnyvale in Northern California. If the deal is concluded, Google would be charged with managing the airfield and rehabbing the historic hangars at the site.

The space authority had been looking to offload the responsibility of management of the airfield for quite some time. NASA said in a statement Monday, that it would help reduce costs and generate some revenue.

The statement on the deal made no mention of what Mountain View-based Google would be required to do.

The company has however, already committed to upgrading the hangars, creating an educational facility on-site, and upgrading a golf course on the airfield.

The Verge reports that under the deal, Google would perform much-needed maintenance on a number of structures around the airfield, including Hangar One, and would also pay to operate the airfield, cutting NASA's costs.

The Verge quoted NASA administrator Charles Bolden as saying, the deal "will allow NASA to focus its resources on core missions, while protecting the federal need to use Moffett Field as a continued, limited-use airfield."

The 1930s built structure had been badly in need of rehabilitation for years. The 8-acre hangar, though built to house rigid airships, was repurposed as a more general-purpose hangar by the Navy.

NASA's Ames Research Center, took over the structure in 1994, but it had to be closed in 1997 due to toxic chemicals leeching from the surface of the facility.

A few years ago, crews started with skinning the facility, the bare skeleton of which can be seen on the airfield. The contract would see, Google re-skin Hangar One and rehabilitate it along with Hangars 2 and 3, as also create an educational and public use facility and maintain Moffett Field itself.

Google, with its Mountain View headquarters not far from the Ames Research Center, has previously conducted joint research with Ames.

The two, in a joint effort last year launched the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, a facility for developing quantum computers that would help business and government alike.

Also in a rather controversial move, Google executive-owned company H211 signed contracts to operate and store executives' private jets at Moffett Field, paying an estimated $2 million a year and carrying out some scientific research with the planes.