After this morning's X Prize Foundation announcement (the foundation is partnering with Google to award 30 million dollars to the first two teams to land a manned spacecraft on the moon), I got a chance to have a quick chat with Larry Page of Google-founding fame about his childhood dreams, visiting outer space, and a couple other things.

Brian Heater: Do you consider this to be a fulfillment of your childhood fantasies? Did you want to be an astronaut when you were growing up?

Larry Page: I don't know that I wanted to be an astronaut; but I'd love to go into space.

BH: OK, so there's a bit of a selfish reason: You do want to go into space, and this might help you get there.

LP: I think everyone wants to go into space... If it's easy, efficient, and affordable.

BH: What specifically do you think Google can bring to the table? Obviously there's the monetary... What other sorts of things are you bringing?

LP: Our engineers are really excited about this. They put up this [Google] Moon product; you can see the old Apollo data really well, and that's just great. As our technologists get excited about things...

BH: Is this something you've been thinking about for a while? Google Moon has been around for some time now. Has this been in conjunction with that all along?

LP: Yeah, we use these white boards at the company that say we have a Google Lunar Base.

BH: Yes, that April Fool's Day thing.

LP: But also just around the company, these are things the engineers like to doodle about. So I think people when are interested in science and technology, and that's what they do for a living, they love this kind of stuff. They know that more is possible than what's really happened. They just get naturally excited about it, and I think there's opportunities.

BH: How are you going to be promoting this through your different media channels?

LP: We'll do tons of stuff. I've been amazed, being involved with the X Prize project for a while, at how well they were able to market the X Prize. They have a press book that's five binders!

BH: So for private citizens, who can't get too involved with the creation of a spacecraft, is there any way that they can really get involved in this?

LP: Well, Peter mentioned you'll be able to submit photos of stuff... I think people will be able to do a lot of things. Just being enthusiastic, showing up for the launches, and all those things, really matters... There was a huge turnout for the Ansari X Prize launch. A huge mass of people camped out there; just amazing to see.

BH: OK. Any comments about the Google Phone?

LP: No.

BH: No? OK. Thank you!

For the PC Magazine news story on X-Prize, click here.