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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."
Oh wait, wrong Picard.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Reminds me of the Helios project back in 2001. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010831.html
"The Y chromosome is genetic. The odds are very good that if you are male then your father was too." -Internet Commenter
I'm just sayin'
The battery thing for dark hours makes me nervous.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
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.
Ah, the heat from the lamps causes the air to rise, providing upward suction on the wings. Brilliant!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.