Sending a man to Mars would definitely trump synfuels, but on the other hand, unless Mars has fast oil reserves that we can build a pipeline back to the US for, it still doesn't do us much good. I'm very excited about recent news stories such as the 19 requests that were just filed by a variety of companies to use federal lands for shale oil production, or Montana's huge push for synthetic fuel from coal. It's estimated that Montana alone has enough coal that can be converted to oil to rival Saudi Arabia! We've reached a pricepoint where it should easily be more economical to produce synthetic oil from both coal and shale rather than importing oil from elsewhere. Synfuels could actually return us to being able to export oil to the rest of the world, in fact.