With its meteoric stock price increases and recent acquisitions such as YouTube, it's generally assumed that Google can buy just about anything. But could it really pluck a treasure from the National Air and Space Museum and use it as a bauble in the lobby of its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters? The answer, thankfully, is no. Internet tech sites were buzzing Saturday with rumors that Google had purchased SpaceShipOne to hang in Building 43 at its headquarters. Even the rumor-prone geek sites were a bit sheepish about running with the "news," but they also weren't about to be caught flat-footed with this juicy bit of technogossip like most apparently were with the YouTube takeover. So, in the interests of good journalism (and just in case it was true), AVweb e-mailed SpaceShipOne designer, builder and project engineer Burt Rutan, who seemed a little puzzled by the inquiry.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/briefs/spaced-out-google-rumor-put-to-rest