In the sixties getting a man to the moon was an acceptable challenge. More than 50 years later we shouldn't waste ten years of our countries best and most brilliant minds on something like merely better millage.

How a commercially viable replacement for oil, that can be made in the US in a way that doesn't produce CO2? That would do a lot to improve the world is a worthy goal.

1) It's a big goal, but one where the first steps are already being made, just as with the moon mission.

2) It has the potential to develop a ton of derivative technology that is widely applicable.

3) It has the potential to cement American's place for decades more, just like the rocket technology developed as a by-product of the space race did. It was hard to compete militarily with the country that could bomb you from space with ICBM's, and it'll be hard to compete economically that has a source of cheap, clean energy.

Done; next challenge?

It was to show the world, once and for all, that communism wasn't better than capitalism.

For that you need a big hairy audacious goal. Better millage isn't one. Cutting the arabs out of the oil deal, saving humanity as we gather the resources needed for a final jump into our future as a spacefaring species -- that is a goal worth of us.

I understand and it achieved its purpose (yay freedom) but now is different. Freedom has won, commies are laughed at, though mildly problematic, and the planet is one, sort of. The problems we face are less epic which makes them seem dull and we should be thankful for that.

China isn't going to attack us, they make far more money trading with us.

The arabs on the other hand.

But wait, bicycles are more fuel-efficient than even the best cars -- that should imply that the Chinese will want to use them instead, right? Because the problem is as simple as discovering greater fuel efficiency?

Or is this the bizarro world you mocked where higher fuel efficiency is bad?

Yes, the point I made from the beginning, except that I added that such a policy would make the contest for the supercar superfluous -- it would eliminate all the marginal uses of energy (i.e. where the benefit doesn't exceed the cost + tax) in the first place!

One step above copy-paste is analysis, and one step above that is understanding.

Love your work YodaBot!

In 10 years? Extremely yawn-worthy. Tesla plans on building a 0 emissions, all-electric car and selling it around $20,000 in two years. Not 10 years with epic, huge pollution going everywhere.

> How out of touch are you? Do you not believe emissions are a serious problem?

How out of touch are you? Obviously emissions are a serious problem. That's why we shouldn't aspire as a country to be emitting gigantic amounts of greenhouse gasses from our cars in 10 years.

Maybe you are referring to clean coal technology which I am dubious of, but I think it is unlikely that tranferring cheap electric power across great distance is more efficient.

If your statement is meant to imply that electric cars are a bad idea because they're "essentially coal powered", I disagree. Imagine if doctors applied that kind of logic: "We'll, you could quit smoking, but, I mean, you're still going to die eventually anyway."

Of course they are, but increasing efficiency is only loosely related to that, due to Jevons Effects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Having more efficient (and probably phallic shaped) vehicles could reduce aggregate emissions ... or, more likely, the lower cost of driving could increase how often it's done.

Unless the newer efficiency is combined with laws that make emissions directly more costly, you're ultimately just bailing from one side of the pool to the other.

But then, if you're going to put those laws in place, then you don't need to reward any one specific technology's creation; you've already incentivized (sorry) any emission-reducing change in behavior, which is a far longer list than any bureaucrat or contest-creator can come up with. Unless, of course, you think that we're going to have separate contests for "make the average distance of worker from workplace less than one mile" or "make average driving distance less than 11k miles/person-year", etc etc etc.

Projects like the "car with ultra-high gas mileage" are instances of a very unproductive mentality when it comes to responsible environmental stewardship: it's a mentality that, stripped of misdirection, says "it's okay to be wasteful, as long as you're wasteful with efficient technology".

This is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. To a partisan all pragmatism is bad.

Pure, unadulterated feel-good-ism.

The bizarro world where nobody ever increases their fuel use in response to its greater effectiveness of use?

The bizarro world where people can feel like they've said something insightful simply because they're advocating greater fuel efficiency regardless of how poorly they understand the system in which it operates?

Careful. Around here that kind of talk will get you labeled a statist. In reality society is simple and self-governing, if only government gets out of the way! Also: ponies.

If you want to preserve "vital" functions of government, then you need to establish what those are and scrape off anything that is both an expense, and interfering with society.