Solar Plane To Make Public Debut

vigmeister writes "Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has unveiled a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world. The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night. Dr. Piccard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies. He expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012. The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale of a modern airliner. The airplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors, and propellers to get it through the dark hours. The public unveiling on Friday of the HB-SIA took place at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich."

Comments

Making it so...

[Tau Neutrino]

Oh wait, wrong Picard.

Re:Making it so...

[Anonymous Coward]

making it so... wrong? She'll be legal in two years..

Re:Making it so...

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong thread. Try using both hands on the keyboard.

Re:Making it so...

[nadaou]

Actually: right Piccard! He is the grandson of Auguste Piccard the famous balloonist who the Star Trek character was named for. And his father Jacques was one of the two submariners to (ever) visit the deepest part of the ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Piccard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Piccard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Piccard

Wikipedia tells me that Auguste Piccard was also the inspiration for Professor Cuthbert Calculus from Tintin.

Helios

[Blixinator]

Reminds me of the Helios project back in 2001. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010831.html

Re:Helios

[blind biker]

Great reference, thank you!

The Helios is an amazing technological feat: it reached an altitude of about 30 Km, which is the highest a non-rocket aircraft has ever achieved. And due to its propellent being unexhaustable, it could, conceivably, stay in the air forever, provided that it climbs high enough during sun-time.

The Helios is stuff I'd like to see more development in.

Re:Helios

[Anonymous Coward]

The Helios is an amazing technological feat: it reached an altitude of about 30 Km, which is the highest a non-rocket aircraft has ever achieved.

Technically inaccurate. The highest altitude a non-rocket engined aircraft has achieved is 37,650 meters, set in a MiG-25 on a "zoom flight" (Think pointing up, full throttle until the engine dies, and seeing how far up you can go). It holds the record for highest SUSTAINED altitude, beating the SR-71's old record by 5 km.

Don't take the red-eye!

[motherpusbucket]

I'm just sayin'
The battery thing for dark hours makes me nervous.

Re:Don't take the red-eye!

[jackharrer]

Modern passenger aircraft can glide with engines on for about 30-60min before crashing. That thing, made for gliding can glide from 10.000 m whole night, I suppose... I wouldn't be so nervous about it.

Re:Don't take the red-eye!

[tweak13]

Without knowing more about the aircraft (like the exact glide ratio and best glide speed) a few back of the envelope calculations suggest that the glide time from 30,000 ft to sea level would probably take about 3.5 hours. While impressive, it's not going to make it the entire night without some help.

Autopilot?

[wjousts]

From the article:

"The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," said Dr Piccard.

""In a balloon you can sleep, because it stays in the air even if you sleep. We believe the maximum for one pilot is five days."

Seems autopilot should be the least complicated part of this endeavor, especially considering that there have already been several unmanned solar powered aircraft demonstrated already. Turn on the autopilot and catch some Z's.

Re:Autopilot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but that would add considerable weight and complexity. It sounds like this plane is on the edge of what's technologically possible as it is.

Re:Autopilot?

[qoncept]

I'd think that with unproven technology you'd want to make sure your guy was awake the entire time. Sure, you could make alarms, but there are any number of unforeseen things that could come up and cause an accident while the pilot was asleep.

Re:Autopilot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially if the autopilot tries to make corrections to altitude, speed, etc, and drains your battery power while you are sleeping. Wake up w/ a dead battery in a stall? No thank you.

Re:Autopilot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Model aircraft have autopilots which weigh considerably less than one of your turds.

Perhaps if you jus have a shit before you fly the weight limits will be ok....

Re:Autopilot?

[Dayze!Confused]

Unmanned means there is nobody on the actual aircraft itself, but that doesn't mean there is no one near the radio controls connected to it, or the monitoring tools back at home. Those people, probably a team of people I am guessing, would, again I am guessing, take shifts to make sure the craft was doing well on its first flight.

Re:Autopilot?

[dontmakemethink]

Agreed. Single-manned cross-ocean trips by sailboat have been done many times, even before GPS navigation, should be much easier by air.

Re:Autopilot?

[Savantissimo]

With such a light weight, huge wing area and flying at low altitude this plane will get tossed about like a leaf in a hurricane in the slightest turbulence. I don't think autopilots can cope with that.

Re:Autopilot?

[tignet]

I don't know that single-manned air travel should really be thought of as much easier than sailboat.

A boat in the water will stay afloat unless something causes it to sink. A plane in the air will fall unless something causes it to fly.

I would sleep much better as the sole operator in a boat rather than the sole operator in a plane. In a boat the worst that's likely to happen is you've gone off-course. And even without GPS an experienced navigator will get back on track. In a plane the worst that's likely to happen is you suddenly wake up because you have this crazy dream that you're free-falling...

Re:Autopilot?

[MaskedSlacker]

Complexity yes, weight no.

Re:Autopilot?

[4D6963]

Why even put a guy in it? Just make the whole thing remotely controlled/monitored by something like radio or a satellite connection.

They solved the night flying problem nicely

[Anonymous Coward]

At night, a grid of halogen headlamps mounted over the solar panels is activated.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[causality]

At night, a grid of halogen headlamps mounted over the solar panels is activated.

Reminds me of the Looney Tunes and WIle E. Coyote. He would get a platform on wheels and put a sail on it and then a fan, also mounted on the same platform, would blow air at the sail and ... somehow this would get him moving.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[fredrikj]

Ah, the heat from the lamps causes the air to rise, providing upward suction on the wings. Brilliant!

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[bencoder]

Actually that might work... Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind.

If the sail was positioned at 90 degrees and then the fan blew across the front of it, you'd create the Bernoulli effect, with the lower pressure air behind the sail pushing you forward. Of course in the configuration in the cartoon I expect Wile E. was just blowing it from behind, in which case it wouldn't work at all.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[causality]

Actually that might work... Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind. If the sail was positioned at 90 degrees and then the fan blew across the front of it, you'd create the Bernoulli effect, with the lower pressure air behind the sail pushing you forward. Of course in the configuration in the cartoon I expect Wile E. was just blowing it from behind, in which case it wouldn't work at all.

Yes, the cartoon portrayed the latter case. The way Wile E. was doing it, any force acting on the sail (wanting to move it forward) would be entirely counteracted and cancelled out by an equal and opposite force acting on the fan (wanting to move it backward). Yet somehow he got moving, and quickly. Of course he didn't get the roadrunner...

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[Crazyswedishguy]

I haven't looked into this, but I would guess that probably wouldn't be much better than just the thrust provided by the fan, correct?

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[bencoder]

I haven't looked into it either but intuitively it does seem very unlikely that you could improve on just having the fan thrusting behind you.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[2gravey]

"with the lower pressure air behind the sail pushing you forward"

Actually lower pressure pulls to toward it.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[bencoder]

Doh. of course, you are right, I got mixed up with lower speed... the lower speed air means it's higher pressure. Thanks.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind."

You are wrong. If you were right then a sailboat would not need a keel. Remove the keel on a sailboat and the boat will not sail upwind, not matter what sails it has, it will sail downwind.

A sailboat sails upwind because the pressure of the wind on the sails causes the keel to press against water below the boat. These two forces acting against each other just aft of the boats centre of gravity force the boat forward.

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[lysdexia]

Thanks for that. I was fearing a wash of links to "Wind-Driven Propeller Cart Goes Faster Than Wind". Though I have to admit it was counter-intuitive the first time I saw it laid out. :-)

Re:They solved the night flying problem nicely

[bencoder]

Sails generate lift when sailing close to the wind(i.e. upwind) but that lift isn't going to be directly forwards, so you are right that the keel has to balance that to make the boat go forwards, but you are wrong that the sails don't produce lift. Obviously, sailing downwind is different and you can just have the wind push you.

See http://www.physclips.unsw.edu.au/jw/sailing.html for more.

I need to get me one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

It will likely need some back up form of propulsion though. Which to pick; solid or liquid fuel rockets?

Re:I need to get me one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Liquid. Pilots often have some ethanol on hand, in some form or another ... usually in solution about 40% and in a glass container.

Ultralight?

[causality]

I wonder if they could ever make an ultralight version so that you would be allowed to fly one without a pilot's license. At least in the USA you can fly small, personal ultralight aircraft with no pilot's license if the craft meets certain criteria. I would imagine they would need to get it working/economical first and then worry about making it more compact but I sure would like to see something like that.

Re:Ultralight?

[Mitchell314]

It would be a long stretch, and we'd need new technology, but it's not strictly impossible. I would wager, if price isn't an issue, that could very well become a possible reality in the future.

Re:Ultralight?

[clang_jangle]

I'm pretty sure the surface area required for the solar panels ensures the size will exceed ultralight specs. Perhaps if/when we get more efficient, smaller solar panels though...

Re:Ultralight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful. The maximum weight on an ultralight is around 250lb. Maybe an aeronautic engineer/physicist could crunch some numbers, but it'd probably be a cold day in hell for a solar-powered plane, less than 250lb, to be able to lift you off the ground and continue indefinitely, unless you weighed considerably less than a horse jockey.

Re:Ultralight?

[fatmal]

Its already been built smaller - actually that was done first as a proof of concept. Have a look at http://solar-flight.com/sunseekerII/index.html - built by Eric Raymond. From the magazine article that I have (Pacific Flyer - June 2009), with an empty weight of 120Kg and a gross weight of 230Kg, this should fit nicely into the US Ultralight regulations, but probably not the Part 103(?) that doesn't require licenses.

Solar-powered plane makes me think of one thing...

[Tetsujin]

Captain PLAAANEEET!

'Cause the Planeteers had one, or something.

Neat, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

am I the only one not too impressed by the flight speed of 25MPH? Seems a little crappy to spend all this money on a plane when you could get a used moped and go faster.

Re:Neat, but..

[smallshot]

The article said they should fly at roughly 25 knots for the flight around the world. I assume this is so it can fly and recharge in the day, and fly on batteries at night, which leads me to believe it can fly considerably faster, but only if night travel is not required in the same flight.

Re:Neat, but..

[OolimPhon]

Good luck getting your moped to go across any water, or over rugged mountain ranges.

Faster plane

[jonsmirl]

The plane is too slow. If they had a faster design it could fly around the world in continuous daylight.

Re:Faster plane

[Blixinator]

They're trying to prove that it can fly at night using the energy it stored during the day. Would kinda defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?

Re:Faster plane

[CanadianRealist]

There's really not much chance of achieving that - it would have to be much much faster.

The circumference of the earth is about 40 000 km. If you could start first thing in the morning, and arrive by nightfall the next day, that would allow a maximum of about 36 hours. I really don't see a solar powered plan managing 1111 km/hr.

Re:Faster plane

[Big_Breaker]

The earth is 24.8k miles in circumference, so you need to fly about 1,030 miles per hour to stay under the sun at all times.

Good luck getting a solar-powered electric prop plane to fly just under mach two.

Re:Faster plane

[Anonymous Coward]

This strategy makes less sense at the equator obviously. Even if you were to move to a higher latitude the odds of a solar powered anything, that isn't in free fall, doing more then 500mph is not very high.

Re:Faster plane

[jonsmirl]

Start a little further north and start in dark with charged batteries. They never follow the equator exactly on these around the world records.

Re:Faster plane

[OolimPhon]

Of course, once you get to the arctic/antarctic circles, you have an option of quite a bit more daylight for part of the year.

Re:Faster plane

[blind biker]

The only solution is climbing high enough during sun-hours, and sailing during night-time. Until we invent new power storage technology, such as super-flywheels or such.

Re:Faster plane

[Big_Breaker]

And you can circumnavigate the globe much easier as well. Technically you could just take a tight diameter (say one mile) spin directly around the North pole and qualify on a technicality.

While not stated explicitly, I think the idea is to fly 24.8k miles in one direction and come back to where you started. That could be pole to other pole and back or around the equator or something in between. In any case you have to be traveling faster than the speed of sound to do it the honest way with the sun overhead at all times.

Re:Faster plane

[Anonymous Coward]

"Circumnavigate the globe" does not mean pass through all longitudes. There is no technicality there. Circum- means 'around.' Navigate means travel. To travel AROUND the world -- not to fly in a one-mile diameter circle.

Re:Faster plane

[Big_Breaker]

Ok if 89.9 degrees latitude does not count what is the maximum? As always, wiki has an answer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumnavigation#Aviation

"For powered aviation, the course of a round-the-world record must start and finish at the same point and cross all meridians; the course must be at least 36,787.559 kilometres (22,858.729 mi) long (which is the length of the Tropic of Cancer). The course must include set control points at latitudes outside the Arctic and Antarctic circles.[3]"

So there you go.

Although Less is More,

[Deltaway]

The captain is Jean Picard. The pilot is Bertrand Piccard. Sorry, sir!

!soulplane

[drewzhrodague]

I read this as "Soul Plane to make Public Debut."

Not American?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not interested.....

Can I drive it?

[SnarfQuest]

It's no good unless I can drive it like a car!

SOMEONE give me the flying car I was promised!

Re:Can I drive it?

[I'm not really here]

http://www.terrafugia.com/ -- this is about as close as you're going to get with our overly regulated system.

Even if....

[hesaigo999ca]

Even if it was going to be such a problem to fly at night, does it mean we cant take these and make use of them during the day only, and keep the older gas powered planes for night time...I mean do they have to replace all the planes over night...no pun intended!

Dr. Piccard?

[slapout]

Jean-Luc and Beverly's son?

the bleeding edge

[copponex]

The point is not to impress you, but to prove that a solar powered plane can be built. If you have a large capital investment but you don't have to pay for fuel for 20 years, it opens up the transportation market in novel ways.

I imagine the solution will be vehicles that can ride the jetstream. The ticket will be one way, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be effective to circle the globe if the fuel is cheap or free.

Reverse Vampire Airlines

[bodland]

"We only fly during the day."

OK, let's test the instrument flight now.

[swschrad]

"into the clouds, rely on instruments."

uh, inspector, we have a problem here.... everything seems to have gone dead.

Re:OK, let's test the instrument flight now.

[dangitman]

Uhhh, light penetrates clouds.

Why?

[This name in use]

Just asking, but isn't this just an ego-boosting stunt for another billionaire?

My God, an airliner-sized plane that costs millions of dollars and carries a single passenger at nearly the speed of a moped!
Now we all just need millions of dollars, a large runway for every home, parking for them wherever we want to go, and we'll finally break out of those nasty fossile fuel addictions.

I'm not trying to be a hater, but it seems like they are pouring way too much into this to get too little to be that impressive.
Please don't ruin my life, Monsieur Piccard.

Re:Why?

[lysdexia]

That's what they said about Barbicane. Sort of puts it all in perspective, doesn't it? I mean, would we have even had the moon bases we have now if it weren't for that "Ego-Boosting Stunt"?

Re:Why?

[WARM3CH]

Oh yeah, why bother with science and adventure? In case you didn't know, this insanity runs in the Piccard family for generations.
This guy is Bertrand Piccard, is the first man to go round the globe non-stop on a balloon. His father was Jacques Piccard, the first man that used a build and used a capsule to go down the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the world's oceans. His grandfather was Auguste Piccard, the first man to build and used a balloon to go to the stratosphere, setting a record of 23,000 m (72,177 ft). Not to mention the other branch of the family, Jean Felix Piccard, Jeannette Piccard and Don Piccard who were also famous aeronauts and balloonists.

Re:Why?

[WARM3CH]

Damn!! so many typos!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

As WARM3CH mentioned, Piccard is anything but "another billionaire".

As we can read on their website, the goal of their project is: In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project [...] aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy .

Please also have a look at: http://www.solarimpulse.com/en/documents/finance.php?lang=en&group=partner

Re:Why?

[Hurricane78]

Well, you have to start somewhere, don't you?

No idea is born perfect.

They should talk to Burt Rutan

[chaim79]

Voyager made it around the world, non-stop, with two pilots and an autopilot. If they could do it in that aircraft in the mid '80s there should be no problem doing it now for this solar aircraft!

There is no reason to go trough the night!

[Hurricane78]

Just follow the sun. "Heliostationary" relative to earth, if you will. :)