This morning, Buzz Aldrin and I got to pretend we were on the moon. The astronaut was in Washington for the unveiling of the new-and-improved Google Moon, a digital lunar model with the same fluid navigation as Google Earth. The guest of honor, however, didn’t stay on message. While he would “love to talk about Google and Google Moon,” Aldrin said, he felt obliged to make the case for heading to Mars, a point he emphasized by brandishing what appeared to be printouts of a PowerPoint presentation.
Back to Google Moon: Armchair astronauts can dip down to the surface, tip the camera to the horizon, and admire the topography. To help those of us who are not intimately familiar with lunar neighborhoods, Google Moon is indexed with the sites of the moon landings, the treks of various rovers, and a variety of geological landmarks. As you mosey along, you might chance upon a 3-D rendering of a lunar lander or run into a few astronauts. (They look like Lego men.)
The product, which you can download as part of Google Earth 5.0, is certainly fun to play around with, even if the scenery is a tad barren and monochromatic. On one point, however, I was sorely disappointed: Google cannot fly you to the moon. Presently, it can only teleport you there.
The only way you can get to the moon as of now is to select it from a dropdown menu within Google Earth. (Mars, rendered in much less detail, is also available.) There is no direct flight from the porch of your childhood home to the Paracelsus crater. This is a shame, because Google Earth’s killer feature isn’t its imagery. It’s the mesmerizing navigation—the fact that you can be wandering through downtown Tulsa, type in “Giza Pyramid,” and lift into space to take a giant leap across the ocean.
Fortunately, Google does want us to soar through space eventually. Brian McClendon, who is in charge of most of Google’s geography products, told me it’s a feature they’d like to implement once all the databases can be squared with one another. It seems as if it should be doable. We did put a man on the moon.