Quote:
Originally Posted by elhigh
The per-individual cost isn't the issue, the fact that the total price tag is as big as it is, is the issue. Paring the per-person costs down to make them look small is how the government keeps spending such tremendous amounts of money, denouncing the expenditures as mere drops in each of our buckets. My point is that that drop, like so many others, could have been much smaller or even non-existent.
You have yourself posted photos of NASA's aeromodding experiments, there's the Bullet Truck to draw examples from, and of course Luigi Colani's body of work is out there. There's an awful lot of information on the whole topic already available, an awful lot of work has already been done, and this study group went and did it again. If that's how they economize effort and brains, is it any wonder they didn't do as well as an independent research group has already done? An independent research group with a budget only a fraction of the size, I might add.
It isn't that we, each American citizen, got ripped off to the tune of 36 cents. It's that we, the American tax base, got a piss-poor return for our $115 million dollars.
|
So at 23-million a year we got:
*115% mpg improvement instead of 50%
*Hybrid
*Hermetic AC
*Waste heat recovery-electric generation
*Photovoltaic power augmentation
*Active telemetry/transmission,smart-shifting
*Active aerodynamics
*Active suspension
*Custom chassis
*Exotic lightweight materials
*Smart steering
I'm no manufacturing engineer,but this seems like a bargain to me.One international space station toilet/year.
Some automakers spend $ 2-billion on advertising each year which doesn't do me any good.That's $ 10-billion over the same period.
I'm excited to drop 36-cents if it means getting the USA off imported oil.
If it gets my air within the Clean Air Act standards,my annual inspection fee will be $12 instead of $39.50.That's worth more than $115-million right there.