MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Project Foghorn is one of those straight-from-science-fiction concepts we’ve come to expect from Alphabet, the sprawling conglomerate formerly known as Google. The idea, hatched by the company’s X research lab, was to use seawater and chemistry to create fuel that could be refined into gasoline. This gas would be just like the gas we fill our cars with today — except that unlike today’s gas, it would not add to global warming because it would recycle carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

If the project had been successful — and this was always a big if — it would have changed the definition of green energy and potentially undercut some of the most important industries in the world, not least the oil business. But after two years of trying, and an undisclosed research budget, Foghorn died during a January staff meeting.

The result: Everyone on the team received a bonus (they won’t say how much).

X, formerly called Google X, cheekily refers to itself as “the moonshot factory.” They are the people behind Google’s self-driving car, along with various out-there projects like Loon, an attempt to beam internet access from stratospheric balloons, and Wing, a drone delivery service. Those efforts sit atop dozens of aborted projects — some just ideas, others that consumed years — like a never built jet pack and giant blimps that would haul cargo with the same efficiency as an ocean liner.

What all these efforts have in common, besides imaginative power, is that they do not make any money. X’s budget and head count are a secret, but shareholders’ perceptions about the division were aptly summed up by a poster board in its Mountain View, Calif., offices. It had a picture of a burning $100 bill followed by, “Investors think we do this.”