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It is possible if you use transparent aluminum instead of glass. Aluminum oxynitride can have a similar flex strength to series 7000 aluminum alloy (a type used in aviation). The material expense seems high - it's $10 per square inch, so you're looking at an additional $500,000 or more in material costs to install a single narrow strip in the aisles on a plane - not to mention testing, certification, and re-engineering. That cost is peanuts compared to the retail price of a 747 ($350-$400 million), so it just may be worth it.

Maybe a materials scientist needs to send Richard Branson a message.
He'd really do it if it was feasible.

Here's what the material looks like.

didn't it have some quite obvious maths that showed that if all cars in the USA were converted to electric, it would require 7,000 GWh of electricity just to charge them every day?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we immediately replace all gas-powered cars with electric cars overnight using our existing infrastructure and power grid. It's going to take a long time, and our energy sector is going to come with it. More solar energy is absorbed by the earth every hour than humans use in a year. It's completely feasible to have an all-solar energy grid that powers everything we need it to and then some, it will just take a lot of time and significant investment to get anywhere near that point. It's just the case right now that we have an infrastructure built on supporting gas-powered vehicles. That is what needs to change. It's also safe to say that we haven't found every source of natural resources that this planet has to offer, and we haven't even begun to look outside of our planet for additional resources. Not to mention manufacturing our own from available materials.

In short, not only is it possible, but Elon Musk is right for doing his part to help push people in that direction. His direction isn't the only feasible one though, so feel free to compete with him.

A variety of solutions is great, even if mainstream nuclear may be questionable given our social systems being unable to have the required transparancy and accountability.

But 100% solar is not "insane", especially with energy storage. For energy storage, molten salt, compressed air, and lifting weights or water are all currently viable options, with more on the way, but it is still a bit awkward compared to much better batteries or fuel cells. But those are not unmanageable compared to the kind of things civil engineers and industrial engineers already manage. Storing hydrogen in nickel-metal hydrides may be a workable safe solution.
http://www.hydrogencomponents.com/hydride.html

Fossil fuels use a lot of land already for mining and transportation and rights of ways, which could be used for solar. We could have solar roadways, too:
    http://www.solarroadways.com/

Also, about 50% of the US land area is devoted to the production of animal products (mostly growing grain for livestock) so clearly the USA is willing to devote huge amounts of land for questionable endeavors (as animal products and refined grains together ingested in mass quantities are killing many Americans who should be eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans instead).

Going 100% solar would only take 1% or so of the USA, maybe less.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

So, people in the USA could cut back 2% on animal products and be healthier and get cheap sustainable power from that freed up land, as that is as much land as it would take to go all solar. Having lived near working farms sometimes, most of them look like moonscape industrial wastelands a lot of the time anyway, and many are dosed regularly with pesticides, so I'm not sure solar would be that much of a worse thing -- it probably would be better for the groundwater. Maybe more native animals and plants might live between panels than on poisoned farms?

New York City just did a study that it could supply half its electricity by solar roofs, so we may not even need that much other land devoted to solar. Also, energy efficiency and using solar as process heat directly instead of electricity can cut the land area needed too.

So, I'm not saying we will go 100% solar as you are right about geothermal and wind etc., and there is algae too, and we may even see hot or cold fusion, but 100% solar is not "insane" in any way I can see, just unlikely.

Still, as I see it, solar is so convenient being quiet and low maintenance, that once more innovation goes into it, it will likely be cheaper than anything other than some type of fusion. Now that solar being at grid parity is three to five years away, it is within the planning horizons of US companies. I read recently in an article interviewing a researcher in thin silicon-based panels that something like as much money is now going into PV solar research in two years as since it was invented.

More on GE:
http://ceramics.org/ceramictechtoday/2011/06/01/ge-expands-on-thin-film-solar-becomes-near-term-grid-parity-believer/

So plastic will bend because it is more tensile then glass, Glass will shatter because it's not very tensile despite being quite hard

http://ceramics.org/ceramictechtoday/materials-innovations/iphone-4-ceramic-glass-materials-update/

Here is a recent overview of the status of SOFC technology.

Lifespans are significantly longer than a year now. See Fig 9 on pg 11 of this recent overview of solid oxide fuel cell development. You can see that degradation is on the order of 1% per 1000 h (around 9% per year) during year-long tests of cell stacks. The Siemens-Westinghouse (SWPC in the figure) cell is even far below 1% but it is a more expensive cell. The next few in the list (HTAS/Risoe, Chubu, FZJ) represent more state-of-the-art planar cells.

That comment sure came out of the blue. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization.

Isn't the idea of being a nonprofit, you know, I mean, like, not getting rich?