This is cool--Around the World in a Solar Airplane

[tjwash]

Website and info here

In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project is a paradox, almost a provocation: it aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy, right round the world without fuel or pollution. An unachievable goal without pushing back the current technological limits in all fields

The thing that has hitherto been considered impossible is however the goal that Solar Impulse has set itself: to conceive an airplane capable of taking off autonomously and maintaining itself in flight for several days without any fuel, and propelling itself solely by means of the energy collected by the solar cells mounted on its wings.

As a supplementary difficulty, the energy gathered during the day will have to serve not only to propel the plane, but also to recharge the batteries to ensure flying by night. It is essential for the pilot to approach each night with full batteries and economize available energy to the maximum, to be able to stay in the air until the next sunrise.

Therefore, the greatest challenge, before the round-the-world trip, will be the first complete night flight.

For the solar panels, the day begins late and finishes early: one will only be able to count on about eight hours of "usable" light per day! Indeed, the lower the sun is on the horizon, the less efficient are its rays.

A real count-down will begin each evening, therefore, and the suspense will not reach its peak until the end of the night! One will know the exact time at which the sun will again be able to "feed" the plane's cells... and hope to reach this moment, before the batteries empty themselves completely.

I for one would love to see this happen.

[Peace Patriot]

1. It sounds very exciting! I wish these adventurers well! There is something about

self-started air travel projects like this that is particularly evocative and thrilling. It's like the earliest air flight and balloon flight. The dream of flight. The pioneers. The can-do people--thinking of the impossible, and then doing it.

Also, solar flight reminds me of the special beauty and astonishing technical achievement of the great age of sailing ships. They were marvelous things, sailing ships--and all powered by the wind! Steam and oil-driven ships have never had that beauty, that awesome cleverness. The combination of human intelligence and nature-given (non-extractive, non-polluting) power is uniquely lovely. Nature gives it freely--and we just sail along for the ride.

[dsa]

2. this isn't really that revolutionary

NASA already did something like this with its helios solar-powered plane. it didn't fly around the world, but it proved a solar plane could stay airborne for many hours if not days by using batteries at night.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Helios/index.html">NASA Helios