Apparently it's not enough that NASA and many other federal, state and local government agencies are operating portals in the multi-massive online role playing game (MMORPG) Second Life, now NASA is seeking to create its own such game:

The day after Valentine’s Day, the space agency hopes to receive a pile of five-page proposals detailing how it should go about creating a synthetic online world and a multiplayer game within it. The goal is to lure more youngsters into science, technology, engineering and math professions that NASA needs to achieve its lofty plan to return to the Moon and to build a spacecraft to carry humans to Mars.

In its Jan. 16 request for information, NASA seeks the input of organizations that already operate immersive synthetic environments that would be interested in partnering to develop a new online world and educational role-playing game.

“A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of NASA’s educational cyberstructure,” according to the RFI. “This new synthetic world would be a collaborative work and meeting space as well as a game space of a kind familiar to increasing numbers of American students. Games and challenges in the [massively multiplayer online educational game] would engage students in a way that is both familiar and comfortable for them.”

I've been wondering lately why no Republican presidential contender is campaigning on the message that government is simply spending too much. Indeed: my dad always reminds me that you just need to look at where the marginal dollar is spent to determine whether government is consuming too much of your tax money. If NASA can afford its own MMORPG, it probably has too much money to play with.

And before you ask, yes -- I will play.

For more on MMORPG, see Jonathan V. Last's "Get a (Second) Life."