The NASA MMO

Image: NASA.

I heard a bunch of rumours about this last year, but it seems that this procurement document confirms the big space club's interest in a multiplayer online gaming experience. This is the interesting bit:

NASA is in a position to develop an online game that functions as a persistent, synthetic environment supporting education as a laboratory, a massive visualization tool, and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging, game-play experience.

The NASA concept is pretty progressive: have it be a paid, playable game, but also being simulation enough to use in scientific work. Could we see the missions to the Moon and Mars played out by gamers decades before the actual missions kick off?