Solar-powered plane lands at first stop on round-the-world, fuel-free trip
On Monday, a single-seater plane took off from Abu Dhabi and landed in Muscat, Oman after about ten hours in the air. None of that is remarkable, except for the fact that the Swiss plane is completely solar powered and just finished the first leg of a round-the-world trip that will not require any other fuel source.
Solar Impulse founder Andre Borschberg piloted the plane for the first segment of the trip, and co-founder Bertrand Piccard (the guy who made the first round-the-world balloon flight) will take over for the next part of the journey, from Oman to India. The pair will swap back and forth as they complete their historic trip around the globe, which is expected to take several months. There are 12 scheduled stops on their trip (which they've hashtagged as #RTW), including four in the United States: Hawaii, Phoenix, New York's John F. Kennedy airport and an as-yet-undetermined city in the Midwest.
The plane, Solar Impulse 2, is made of carbon fiber and its 72-meter wingspan is 3.5 meters wider than the one on a Boeing 747-8I. Its wings are kitted out with 17,000 solar cells that supply four electric motors. It also has two massive lithium batteries that are recharged during the day, "which allow the aircraft to fly at night and therefore to have virtually unlimited autonomy." From nose to tail, the entire plane weighs in at about 5,070 pounds, roughly the same as a car (or 1% of the weight of that same Boeing). Its maximum altitude is 27,000 feet and its top speed is around 87 miles per hour.
On the Solar Impulse website, the co-pilots say that they don't want to "revolutionize the aviation industry." Instead, they are trying to
demonstrate that the actual alternative energy sources and new technologies can achieve what some consider impossible. Solar Impulse wants to mobilize public enthusiasm in favor of technologies that will allow decreased dependance on fossil fuels, and induce positive emotions about renewable energies.
In 2013, the same team flew the first version of their plane (called – wait for it – Solar Impulse) across the United States powered by nothing but the sun and their own expectations, but a tear in the plane's wing forced them to land at JFK earlier than expected, without soaring above the Statue of Liberty as they'd originally planned. At the time, Piccard said that the Solar Impulse flight was "an exploration of new ways of thinking." Two years later, they're still exploring, in a bigger plane, on a much bigger scale.
Safe travels, guys.