Many people have called for an “Apollo program” to speed the development of alternatives sources of energy. This is a better analogy than people realize.
The goal of the Apollo program was to put a man on the moon. That goal was achieved on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on lunar surface. The price tag for the feat was about $25 billion in 1960′s dollars–about $135 billion in 2005 dollars. In all, six missions landed men on the moon. It was truly an awesome achievement.
The program created a number of ancillary technological advancements that make our lives better. The Apollo program, however, didn’t make human space travel affordable or commercial. This is the lesson we should learn from the Apollo program. We can spend a lot of money and achieve a one-shot goal, but that doesn’t mean that our goal will be commercially viable.
Last month’s energy bill requires us to produce 35 billion gallons of biofuel. If we spend enough money we can indeed achieve that goal, but it is unlikely that an “Apollo program” would make ethanol commercially viable. If ethanol really competes with petroleum 15 years down the road it will because there is an incredible profit opportunity, not because a few billion were spent on subsidies.
Consider this–in 2006 Exxon Mobil had profits of $39.5 billion, Chevron had profits of $17.1 billion, and ConocoPhillips had profits of $15.5. To achieve these profits these companies had gross revenues in excess of $600 billion. These profits and revenues are what ethanol producers are trying to capture. It might help to get a few billion in subsidies, but they have hundreds of billions in incentives if they can produce commercial quantities of ethanol at affordable prices.
Most likely, an “Apollo program” won’t work. When politics is involved, money will get doled out through political patronage and not necessarily to the most deserving projects. When we move beyond petroleum it will be because someone responded to market demand and created an economical product.
It’d probably be better to call it a “Manhattan Project” to develop alternative energy sources rather than an “Apollo Program.”
Thing is, even though the Manhattan Project involved some of the greatest minds in our country and produced one of the most influential scientific achievements of the last century, it was just a bunch of eggheads toiling away (in secret, I might add).
Landing on the moon had more glamor, more adventure, and resulted in less horrific devastation than splitting the atom.
“Apollo Program” is just more sellable. But for all intents and purposes, it’s a “Manhattan Project”.
If I may quote myself, my reasons for using the analogy of the space program or the war on cancer rather than the Manhattan project were:
“more spinoffs in each case, for one thing, and each led to huge returns even though decades afterward we have neither an effective space program nor a reliable cure for cancer”
CAM
Curt, that’s a argument I can accept.