The title of this post, Google enters the space program, is a prediction…
I had this realization, that Google will enter the space program in ways beyond the Google Lunar X PRIZE or similar. Google will enter the commercial space program.
Google’s entrance into the commercial space program will be for different reasons from other private space companies such SpaceX, Blue Origin, Armadillo Space, or Virgin Galactic, which are focused on space travel or general lifting capabilities of payloads into space.
Instead, Google will enter the space program mainly for one reason — to continue advancing its information infrastructure.
(Google FragSat 2017)
With this, Google will own its own communication satellites and control its own data or information channels and flow. And with this Google will own its own mapping satellites and capabilities and control what locations on Earth and when and why they can map in detail. (They will also use the infrastructure for pure research and understanding of global changes on Earth.)
Because Google’s (initial) needs are unmanned and only require one-way space travel, that is, going up and into orbit, Google will figure out cheap ways to accomplish this, so to make this feasible and routine, using cheap disposable and replaceable, distributed and redundant systems (think Fractionated spacecraft or DARPA’s F6 program).
Perhaps, it has already begun…
ceo