The Google founders' Gulfstream V party plane — quick plane-spotting tip: the Gulfstream V has six windows; the IV only has five — took off on a scientific mission to study the Quadrantid meteor shower Thursday. Larry, Sergey and Eric, you may remember, got permission to park their jets at NASA's Moffett Field for the bargain basement price of $1.3 million plus allowing NASA to use the planes for "science missions." This is the first one we know about. Wait, just how many jets do they have?

OK, we know that Larry and Sergey own a heavily retrofitted 767. Schmidt owned one — or two — Gulfstream V's. Then we reported that Page, Brin and Schmidt might be buying another commercial jet, a Boeing 757 widebody.

The NBC report linked above specifically mentions that a Gulfstream V ran this mission. Perhaps this confirms our report that Schmidt bought a new Gulfstream V to replace the one he sold earlier this year. Either way, that's a lot of planes.

(Photo by Drewski2112)

Contact information for this author is not available.