Solar-Powered Ultralight To Try 24-Hour Flight

blair1q writes "When the solar aircraft Solar Impulse lifts off from an airfield in Switzerland on a sunny day at the end of June, it will begin the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by power it collects from the sun. Former Swiss Air Force pilot Andre Borschberg and round-the-world balloonist Bertrand Piccard developed the aircraft, and Borschberg will be the pilot for this mission. 'The flight will require a lot of attention and concentration — the plane doesn't have an auto-pilot, it has to be flown for 24 hours straight.' For him, the most exciting part of the venture is 'being on the plane during the day and seeing the amount of energy increasing instead of decreasing as on a normal aircraft.'"

Comments

The danger of solar power

[For a Free Internet]

Today the answer to everything seems to be solar power. But before we all get swept up in this fad, let's consider. For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction, said Albert Einstien. Every time yu use up sun rays, you take away energy from the sun. Do these enviro-hippies want to burn out the source of all life and live on a dark ball of ice? They don't care, they are too hopped up on Italian marijuana to think about the consequences of their "innovations." Let's stick to what works, good, clean natural coal power. God bless America!

Re:The danger of solar power

[Rivalz]

Instead of Coal or Solar Power they should create a Boat that Sucks up the water out of the ocean and thanks to BP has oil particles mixed in a high enough concentration to run on a hybrid oil/ocean water mixture forever. Thanks BP!

Re:The danger of solar power

[karnal]

For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction, said Albert Einstien.

Newton's sitting in the corner glaring at you.

Re:The danger of solar power

[Ksevio]

One summer I was working at a college and was wearing a hard hat while I was going to check something at a construction site. As I was heading along a public street, some guy with a big beard and rainbow hat and shirt came up and started asking if I knew anything about solar power. I told him I did, and he worriedly asked if it was "sucking in the sun".

I told him that it was safe because it would be wasted if we didn't save it and he seemed very relieved that science wasn't going to use it all up. He promised to talk to me again so I quickly requested to work at a different site.

Oh god no

[MichaelSmith]

I had a peek at TFA so I could comment. This thing would fall apart in a thermal. Ridge lift means flying fast to avoid flying into the rotor behind the hill. Its not uncommon to pull a couple of Gs flying into and out of a thermal and this aircraft doesn't look up to it to me.

My guess is they are waiting for still air before they fly it. Look at the size of those control surfaces. Sure it will have a high LD but at 30 knots or so.

Official website

[space_in_your_face]

The Official Solar Impulse website at epfl

Re:How about using thermals?

[vadim_t]

Thermal != geothermal.

Nobody said anything about digging holes, or setting up fires. There exist natural regions of hot and cold air in the atmosphere that gliders take advantage of.

Re:How about using thermals?

[AK Marc]

It's not a matter of temperature, but temperature difference. I bet they have thermals in the summer and the winter.

Re:How about using thermals?

[Gubbe]

What everyone seems to ignore is that ridge lift has little to do with thermals.
Thermals are streams of warmer air rising up through colder air and caused by temperature differences, just as the parent mentions.
Ridge lift on the other hand is caused by wind encountering a slope and having to move up to get over it, thus creating an upwards vector that can be used by gliders to soar.
The wind that creates ridge lift is of course ultimately caused by air moving in to balance pressure differences, which are formed by air being displaced by temperature differences, but that doesn't mean that ridge lift is the same thing as a thermal.

Re:What a feat!

[MadnessASAP]

How about a radio relay? Or weather monitoring? Hell those are the 2 blindingly obvious ones that I can think of in 30 seconds I`m sure anybody here could list off a dozen uses for these with a few minutes work.

Re:24 hours straight? Dangerous!

[wisdom_brewing]

I think the motivator of "If you fall asleep you die" should be sufficient to keep him alert...

And how will he stay awake?

[billius]

I'm guessing he's going to use the same method Superman uses to stay awake and vigilant all that time.

Re:What a feat!

[Alioth]

The Wright Flyer was hardly a practical invention, either. But if we'd just listened to the naysayers, we wouldn't make any progress at all.

A low power electric aircraft, even without the solar cells and a battery pack instead, would have a great deal of uses where local flying is needed - for example, traffic reporting, news gathering and reporting (replacing expensive, thirsty and (to many people) obnoxiously noisy helicopters), law enforcement, aerial photography, recreational flying, radio relay, fish spotting, pipeline patrol, powerline patrol.

Projects like this which push material and electrical power delivery technology may move us a step nearer to practical, usable low powered clean, quiet electric aircraft for many of these jobs.

Re:Bad idea

[Flea of Pain]

No kidding, they had the option to have it flown by Capt. Piccard, and chose the other guy. No way this is going to end well...I bet the other guy even wears a red shirt.