While recreational vehicles have been touted as a cost-saving measure for those of us who like to travel, the fact remains that filling up a full-sized class A motorhome can get pretty pricey. This is only made worse by the situation over in the Middle East, which has sent fuel prices sky high in recent weeks. Yet there may soon be an alternative to traditional gas engines, as NASA recently created their own rig that runs on a specially crafted fuel made out of chicken fat.

The space agency has been looking for cost-effective alternatives to jet fuel, and may have stumbled upon gold in the guise of chicken fat biofuels, which they call Hydotreated Renewable Jet Fuel. To test the performance and emissions of the fuel, NASA crafted a custom recreational vehicle engine and drove it cross country.

Spanning more than 2.600 miles between Hampton, Virginia, and the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, the vehicle was named EM-50 after the urban assault vehicle used by Bill Murray and the rest of the guys at Fort Arnold in the comedy classic “Stripes.”

The main goal of the project is to create a renewable biofuels for aircraft, but the organization has not ruled out the possibility of the biofuels being commercially available for RVers and motorists.