Solar-Powered Airplane Completes First International Flight

liqs8143 writes "Solar Impulse, a fully solar-powered airplane, has completed its first international solar-powered flight. After a flight lasting 12 hours 59 minutes at an altitude of 12,400 feet, using no fuel and propelled by solar energy alone, Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels, Switzerland. After the landing, company co-founder Bertrand Piccard said, 'Our goal is to create a revolution in the minds of the people . . . to promote solar energies — not necessarily a revolution in aviation.' Compared with 2003, energy efficiency has increased from 16 to 22 percent. And the cells are now half as thick. The project has a total cost of $88 million, which is funded by mostly-Swiss partners and public donations."

Comments

'International' Flight?

[gmhowell]

Too lazy to RTFA, but couldn't you have indicated the embarkation point? Austria to Switzerland? Not too interesting an international flight. New Zealand to Switzerland? Now we're talking.

Slashdot: quality summaries since Chips and Dips.

Re:'International' Flight?

[BeaverCleaver]

Switzerland to Belgium. So it wasn't just a hop across an adjacent border. And, as the summary says, they were in the air for almost 13 hours.

Re:'International' Flight?

[cheater512]

If they were moving 1cm per minute (spending all its energy just staying up), then they could have only traveled 7.8m. Time doesn't mean much.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think before you post? If they had a helicopter that hovered for 13 hours at such a low speed it would be even more impressive. It FLEW. It didn't crawl or roll.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had a helicopter that hovered for 13 hours at such a low speed it would be even more impressive.

What, like a party balloon?

Re:'International' Flight?

[PPH]

The summary isn't very clear about the flight path. Clearly, this is the work of 'Wrong Way' Corrigan.

Re:'International' Flight?

[pushing-robot]

So it went through Switzerland, France, and Belgium?

Still not that impressive; I'm working on a boomerang capable of traveling across four US states, which I plan to test in New Mexico.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is obviously not what the article meant. TFS clearly states "solar powered airplane." That would not include some kind of hot air balloon or whatnot.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't got a fucking clue where any of those countries are, do you?
Now if they had said Austria, you would've though it went halfway around the world. :P

Re:'International' Flight?

[Posting=!Working]

I actually did RTFA, and none of the articles mention the embarkation point. They mention mission control in Payerne, and that the plane went over the Jura mountains, and that the plane landed in Brussels, but never states where it took off from.

The summary isn't good (Brussels Switzerland?), but the articles suck.

Re:'International' Flight?

[cheeks5965]

you have the laws of flight working against you on this. I doubt the flow of air at 1 cm / min (3.7 10^-4 MPH) would create the lift needed to keep the plane in the sky. Perhaps if it were a solar powered blimp...

Re:'International' Flight?

[iamhassi]

" It FLEW. It didn't crawl or roll."

Hot air balloons fly too "using no fuel" and I'm sure they could be propelled forward using solar too.

Flight distance from Switzerland to Belgium is only 320 miles (487 km). That's only 26 mph (40 kph). A solar powered car is over twice as fast.

At an average speed of 26 mph this isn't an airplane, it's a glider, as you can see from this extremely slow speed take-off

The $94 million wasted on this would have been better spent on improving solar powered cars rather than a 26mph glider.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonetheless, he is on the right track. According to the second article, the craft only travels 50km/hr, which is approximately 400 miles over its 13 hour fight. While this flight may be a step in the right direction for solar powered travel, it still seems unimpressive compared to conventional travel means.

Re:'International' Flight?

[sunzoomspark]

"With this flight, we would like to encourage politicians to opt for more ambitious energy policies,"
The point of the project is to attract attention to solar power and they seem to be doing a good job of that.

Re:'International' Flight?

[iamhassi]

sorry about the flight distance, the 487km came from this link

Re:'International' Flight?

[iroll]

Point ---> x

You ---> x

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was originally unimpressed as well until I realized that this plane did all this *without costing any fuel*.

From a more useful article

The Solar Impulse crossed Switzerland, Luxembourg and France in its 630 kilometer (391.4 mile) journey.

Sure the speed was only like 30 miles per hour, but this at least is a working model that shows this works. As solar cells get even more efficient, it should be able to generate enough lift to speed up. Then it'll be able to start carrying goods as it gets even stronger. Watch as prices on shipping plummet, reducing prices on all goods. Then it becomes acceptable for people. Airplane ticket prices drop like rocks. And thus the world gets even smaller.

I mean, yeah, this is a hell of a way in the future considering cruising speed of a 747 passenger jet is 570mph but it's a good first step.

Now I just need to worry about if it can fly in the dark...

Re:'International' Flight?

[gmhowell]

Switzerland to Belgium. So it wasn't just a hop across an adjacent border. And, as the summary says, they were in the air for almost 13 hours.

Three hundred miles is what someone says further down the thread. Not far by standards of the northern half of the western hemisphere. So again, the headline shouldn't be pimping the international aspect, rather the time aspect (which IS impressive).

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid retard. Yeah, conventional is better. Fill your airplane with conventional fuel fifty years from now. Go ahead!

Re:'International' Flight?

[gmhowell]

So it went through Switzerland, France, and Belgium?

Still not that impressive; I'm working on a boomerang capable of traveling across four US states, which I plan to test in New Mexico.

Make sure you pick your test site wisely or failure may result.

Regarding your .sig: is that old, I thought Apple was on the outs these days?

Re:'International' Flight?

[gmhowell]

The summary isn't good (Brussels Switzerland?), but the articles suck.

Hrm, Slashdot isn't raising its standards to meet the rest of the world, the rest of the world is lowering theirs to meet slashdot...

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like watch as prices on shipping plummet, while keeping the price of goods either the same or increasing them. It isn't often you ever see items becoming cheaper. People will just become richer as a result.

Re:'International' Flight?

[MoonBuggy]

It seems to be a publicity stunt. I find it very unlikely that it'll ever be efficient to lug solar cells around on a plane - not to say that there won't be airliners run from solar power, just that generating that power onboard, in real time, seems ridiculously wasteful. The panels add weight, restrict the design, and depend on the aircraft being in the light pretty much continuously; rather than trying to cram a few square metres of solar cells on the wings, why not just use a whole field full of the things on the ground to produce the energy, and load it onto the plane in the form of (say) hydrogen?

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the flow of air at 1 cm / min (3.7 10^-4 MPH) would create the lift neede

Might be just a lot of hot air blowing from Brussels.

Re:'International' Flight?

[internettoughguy]

The biggest problem I can see with getting up to jet speeds with an electric vehicle is the method of propulsion. How can you propel an e-plane aside from using a conventional prop? Perhaps the ducted fan could eventually replace the turbo prop.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only used *no* fuel if the batteries were at the same level of charge at landing as they were prior to takeoff, othewise, they *did* use fuel.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Archangel Michael]

To give you an idea how fast that was. The Pony Express could do the three hundred miles in less time, at a cost of far less than 88 Million $.I know gliders that have traversed the Appalachia mountains in single day, a distance that is far greater. I still think the pedal powered flight from England to France is more impressive.

Re:'International' Flight?

[dwywit]

Hot air balloons don't generate lift using aerofoils, they float using a large bag of hot lighter-than-the-surrounding air, and they use large propane burners to keep that bag's contents warm - so they do use fuel. They also only have gross control - up and down. Their direction of travel is largely subject to prevailing winds.

Re:'International' Flight?

[gmhowell]

Speaking of pedal power, I wonder how that human helicopter did the other day. Local news said the first flight didn't work, but a second one was scheduled.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Jeremi]

why not just use a whole field full of the things on the ground to produce the energy, and load it onto the plane in the form of (say) hydrogen?

You're pretty much right, this is largely a publicity stunt. No reasonably sized aircraft would be able to replenish a significant portion of its energy budget from the sunlight that lands on its body.

However, there is one niche where a solar powered aircraft would make sense -- lightweight drones that are meant run autonomously and stay up in the air for months or years at a time. For them, being able to "refuel" every day without landing anywhere would be a big plus.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's OK. Slashdot groupthink on this one seems to be "so what?" Apparently that's how crap comparing this glider to a party balloon gets modded informative.

Re:'International' Flight?

[thsths]

> I find it very unlikely that it'll ever be efficient to lug solar cells around on a plane - not to say that there won't be airliners run from solar power, just that generating that power onboard, in real time, seems ridiculously wasteful.

I used to think so, but I have kind of changed my mind. There are a number of points in favour of adding solar cells:

a) If you can integrate them into the wing surface, the impact should be minimal.

b) Planes fly above the clouds, so you get more sunshine hours and higher energy than on the ground.

c) Fuel is heavy, too, and a significant amount of fuel is required just to get the rest of the fuel off the ground.

d) Planes last a long time - so you should be able to amortise quite nicely.

So overall there seems to be a case for it, especially as additional power on long distance flights. It may not be there yet, but the time will come.

Re:'International' Flight?

[beelsebob]

No no – it landed in Brussels in Switzerland. Glad to see that the US version of geography is alive and well.

Re:'International' Flight?

[e70838]

The batteries were at a higher level of charge at landing. They did produce fuel.

Re:'International' Flight?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know, I'd be interested in an aeroplane that flew at 40km/h and had no fuel costs. I could pop across the water and visit my mother in about an hour (including the time getting to the nearest airfield at both ends). On the other hand, going via land takes 3-5 hours depending on the mode of transport.

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

You were clearly referring to the place in (or near) New Mexico called For Corners.

No equivalent point exits for France, Belgium and Switzerland.

You fail it, twice.

Re:'International' Flight?

[TheLink]

Batteries or other forms of energy storage are heavy too. You would need them in many classes of practical solar powered planes.

In the event we run really low on petroleum what would be more common is generating fuel on the ground (hydrocarbons from biofuel, solar, nuclear or whatever) and then filling up a conventional jet plane with it. That way passenger planes can still travel at 900+kph.

Solar powered planes on the other hand might be useful as drones or "satellites".

Re:'International' Flight?

[jpapon]

No offense, but wouldn't it make more sense to use an electrical (or solar powered, i.e. sail-) boat?

Re:'International' Flight?

[TheRaven64]

Not really. The water is the Bristol Channel. At low tide, the water goes out about a mile on each side, and the tides move the water quite fast perpendicular to the direction of travel. You're also crossing some very busy shipping lanes, which is not fun in a small boat.

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

No offense, but wouldn't it make more sense to use that gallon or two of fuel it would take for a cessna to make the trip in a quarter the time? Surely fuel prices could never be high enough to make up for the millions of dollars difference in cost between the two aircraft.

Re:'International' Flight?

[TheRaven64]

About half of the journey time would be the trip to and from the airfields and the take-off and landing time, so a cessna would probably only save about 10 minutes in total - bad traffic on the ground at either end would wipe that out. As to the difference in cost, you're right. I wouldn't buy a cessna, but I'm quite tempted by a solid-wing microlight - you can get something reasonable for the price of a new car.

But that's now - I imagine that solar aircraft will become significantly cheaper in the future. Five years ago, I bought some solar-powered garden lights for about £10 each. I just bought some more for 98p each, and the new ones are much brighter than the old ones ever were. Most of the cost of a solar aircraft is R&D, once that's paid for it becomes a lot cheaper.

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

No, the method of propulsion is easy. The hard part is the power source. Even small turboprop aircraft operate in the megawatt range. Any airliner is going to operate in the hundred megawatt range or better. We have no battery storage technology that can provide anything like the needs of high speed flight for any significant duration.

Re:'International' Flight?

[internettoughguy]

They're both very hard, bordering on impossible, problems. Care to share an electric thruster capable of propelling an airliner at 1000kph?

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

You seem to be woefully ignorant in the scale of what you propose. This aircraft has a wing area of some 200m^2, or roughly that of an old 757. With that wing area, allowing for reduced dispersion in the atmosphere, and high efficiency commercially available cells, you might expect as high as 50kW peak generating capacity. For 450knot+ flight speed, you're looking to replace two turbofans with an output likely somewhere around 50MW each. Under the best conditions, you're three whole orders of magnitude off where you need to be. On a big airliner, 50kW wouldn't even come close to enough to run the avionics, lighting, and air supply.

There is NO commercial worth to solar powered airliner. There really is no worth to manned solar powered research aircraft, as the needs of a pilot are far greater than that of any worthwhile payload. This is nothing more than a $100M publicity stunt.

Re:'International' Flight?

[MichaelSmith]

I doubt the flow of air at 1 cm / min (3.7 10^-4 MPH) would create the lift neede

Might be just a lot of hot air blowing from Brussels.

Apparently its heaven for glider pilots.

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

A ducted fan hooked up to a 50-100MW electric motor. All the hard part has been done. Just take an existing high bypass turbofan and replace the core with a (big ass) electric motor.

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

Once you get away from the R&D costs, solar panels are simply damned expensive to produce. You're looking at several hundred thousand dollars just to fill that wing with panels, and another hundred thousand for the batteries. Beyond that, large composite structures take a lot of time and money to manufacture. I wouldn't be surprised if the thing cost upwards of a million per unit in volume.

Re:'International' Flight?

[GameboyRMH]

I wonder, if you could capture 80% of the solar energy that hit an aircraft the size of something like Boeing's BWB concept (say roughly an equilateral triangle with the length of an A380's wingspan), how much energy would that be?

Re:'International' Flight?

[WhiteDragon]

You seem to be woefully ignorant in the scale of what you propose. This aircraft has a wing area of some 200m^2, or roughly that of an old 757. With that wing area, allowing for reduced dispersion in the atmosphere, and high efficiency commercially available cells, you might expect as high as 50kW peak generating capacity. For 450knot+ flight speed, you're looking to replace two turbofans with an output likely somewhere around 50MW each. Under the best conditions, you're three whole orders of magnitude off where you need to be. On a big airliner, 50kW wouldn't even come close to enough to run the avionics, lighting, and air supply.

There is NO commercial worth to solar powered airliner. There really is no worth to manned solar powered research aircraft, as the needs of a pilot are far greater than that of any worthwhile payload. This is nothing more than a $100M publicity stunt.

I think the biggest potential use for them is that they could theoretically stay aloft for very long periods of time, and so be used as drones, network repeaters, etc. Of course, it's got to either have some on board energy storage for night flying, or keep flying west at the same speed as the terminator (unlikely given the slow speed of this prototype, but for instance it could fly for months at a time during the daylight of Antarctica).

Re:'International' Flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

A ducted fan hooked up to a 50-100MW electric motor. All the hard part has been done. Just take an existing high bypass turbofan and replace the core with a (big ass) electric motor.

http://xkcd.com/37

Re:'International' Flight?

[wagnerrp]

Their potential as a drone is very useful. You can load up surveillance or communications packages, and let them loiter for months on end. NASA experimented with this a bit several years ago, but was shelved when unexpected turbulence over Hawaii caused excessive dihedral on the wing, eventually resulting in a breakup over the ocean.

The problem with manned flight is that between the pilot, cockpit structure, controls, avionics, water, food, and waste storage, you've got several hundred pounds of dead weight that must be centrally located on the wing. Should you want to operate at altitude, you're going to need a pressurized and heated cockpit and an oxygen supply or compressor pump. The centrally located payload results in significantly higher structural stress than if it were built into the wing, or located on multiple pylons distributed across the wing.

Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be _to_ Brussels, _from_ Switzerland, I'm guessing.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's even worse since brussels is home to the EU parliament while swiss isn't in the EU

i am outraged... at this ignorance... damn cowboys should stick to wearing funny hats and riding their horses... :(

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snobbery over American ignorance of geography always amuses me. The fact of the matter is that most people's knowledge of geography is limited to their own country and a few other countries which are important on the international stage. Nearly everyone could find India on a map, but only very few could do the same for, say, Lithuania or Azerbaijan.

In other words, don't expect the average person to know the geography of unimportant countries, like Belgium.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Corbets]

Snobbery over American ignorance of geography always amuses me. The fact of the matter is that most people's knowledge of geography is limited to their own country and a few other countries which are important on the international stage. Nearly everyone could find India on a map, but only very few could do the same for, say, Lithuania or Azerbaijan.

In other words, don't expect the average person to know the geography of unimportant countries, like Belgium.

I'm American, yet I somehow am capable of understanding that Brussels isn't in Switzerland, just as many Europeans are capable of understanding that Miami isn't in New York.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Miami is too easy, it's well known for its sun & beaches. Same with NYC, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston.

Ask a representative sample of Europeans what state Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, or even Chicago are in, and see what the score is then. Heck, ask them what state Portland is in and see if they get the trick question.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Miami is too easy, it's well known for its sun & beaches. Same with NYC, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston.

As a native of Seattle, the LAST thing I'd think Seattle is known for is sun and beaches! Heck, I usually have to specify the State, right near Vancouver BC (not Vancouver, WA) to make people in Europe and Asia realize I'm not from Washington DC.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

My mistake, the wording was off. Should have said

"Miami is too easy, it's well know for its sun & beaches. NYC, LA, etc. are too easy as well."

As for Seattle not being well known, that surprises me, though my assumptions are coloured by the fact that I grew up when Grunge was a Big Thing. That, and the fact that it neatly fits in one of the four corners of the continental USA (along with Boston, Miami, and San Diego).

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Celarent Darii]

The awful truth is that the very existence of Belgium is doubted by some:

http://zapatopi.net/belgium/

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Brussels isn't easy?

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Computershack]

Portland is in Oregon isn't it?

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[TheRaven64]

Miami is too easy, it's well known for its sun & beaches. Same with NYC, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston.

And Brussels is the capital of the EU. In terms of political influence, it ranks up there with Washington DC, Beijing, and Moscow. Of all of the cities in Europe that you might have an excuse for not knowing about, Brussels is near the bottom of the list.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[TheRaven64]

The USA is singularly unoriginal in place names, and there are in fact two large cities called Portland. There is one in Oregon, but the largest city in Maine is also called Portland. For extra fun, ask an American which state Washington is in (Washington DC is not technically in any state, Washington state is a state, and almost every other state has at least a small town of village called Washington).

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree in general, but when you're writing a summary of fact it still might be a good idea to... you know... check your facts.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Bing Tsher E]

I think you mean 'Brussels is where the occupying force of bureaucrats presently infesting many of the nations of Europe is centered.'

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[WalksOnDirt]

Europeans are capable of understanding that Miami isn't in New York.

Right, it's in Oxford.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh?

[Zombie]

I think you mean 'Brussels is where the occupying force of bureaucrats presently infesting many of the nations of Europe is centered.'

Yep. Like GP said, like Washington DC.

Not enough room for Jepp Charts...

[Anonymous Coward]

on that fancy solar plane? Otherwise someone would have noticed they were flying to Belgium, not Switzerland.

Re:Not enough room for Jepp Charts...

[fotoguzzi]

// Subby needs to eat more Brussels sprouts so as not to make such mistakes[/fark off]

Awesome Geography !

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels, Switzerland.
Damn ... never knew Brussels was part of Switzerland ...O wait ... guess I should go hand in my Belgian passport and go request a Swiss one ....

Awesome Geography ./ !

Re:Awesome Geography !

[theNAM666]

Maar, ik wiet niet !

Re:Awesome Geography !

[jovius]

it's obviously a subtle freudian slip. The hardon collider is about in Geneva and Brussels has the chocolate.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[Andy_R]

Brussels is in Switzerland, for very large values of Switzerland.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[wimvds]

If you really had a Belgian passport then you should also know that Brussels International Airport (BRU) is based in Zaventem (Flanders, Belgium), and not in Brussels itself :p.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[Midnight Thunder]

True, but most airports are termed by the biggest city they are associated with. It's only when you want to be accurate you term the area the airport is really in. You don't want to start confusing the people that are coming from outside of the country.

Heck even Charleroi is termed the second airport of Brussels by some.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably flew Ryanair.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[whiteboy86]

Washington D.C., Canada

From a European POV.

Re:Awesome Geography !

[idontgno]

Yeah. The achievement became considerably less impressive when they relocated the source city to the destination country. They just flew the solar-powered airplane out of city limits.

The real achievement wasn't the airplane. It was solving the cultural/political tension in Brussels by physically relocating it to a new country (nearly 700 km distant and 400 meters in elevation). (Yes, I'm American, but I figured I'd show a little respect to the continent involved and use metric distances.)

Really, folks, congratulations on relocating a city of over a million people to Switzerland.

Interesting thought: What are NATO and the European Union going to do, since Brussels was a major "capital" for both and Switzerland isn't a member of either?

Re:Awesome Geography !

[laejoh]

At least the Belgians gained a gouvernement (for free even!)

Re:Awesome Geography !

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on now! You sound like a CS prof.! 1+1=3 for large values of 1 (and all that rot). Perhaps they were going from Geneva Belgium to Brussles Switzerland ... oh wait!

Re:Awesome Geography !

[Zombie]

Yep. Brussels is now located in a democracy with mutual respect and understanding between regions where different languages are spoken. Well, all that will go to hell soon now the Swiss gained Brussels as a city...

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not wanting fancy QC for ./ - but OP should preferably understand the material posted, yes?

Video of landing not playing well

[timeOday]

Is it just me, or is youtube not meeting demand on Sunday afternoons and evenings? Or is it comcast?

editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the f even have editors here. Jeezus.

Re:editors

[phantomfive]

To give you, and others, entertainment, of course. Why do you really come here, anyway? Come on, admit it, you LIKE complaining about English; we know....

Re:editors

[_merlin]

To introduce errors that we can all laugh at, of course! Daily lulz!

Big deal

[solarfreek]

A glider can soar for whole day if it has no pilot and sufficient wings. And they managed to fly from one puny country to another. I can set up an international flight using a paper plane. I just go close to the border and throw it. (Although border patrol might then held me up for suspicion of illegal transport of goods)

Re:Big deal

[countertrolling]

The 'unshorten' site saved me from your troll, but there is a phenomenon I just discovered has a name, which sounds very trollish, called 'cloud suck'. It can keep you aloft for a very long time and even kill you if it carries you too high. Hang gliders beware! And slashdotters beware of almost everybody with a UID over 2000000...

I would be careful

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be careful taking a red-eye on the Solar Powered airline!

Beat them

[retroworks]

I didn't fly across the Atlantic, a savings of 100%

The flight was the easy part

[countertrolling]

The red tape they had to wade through to authorize it was much more painful... Actually crossing the EU probably isn't so bad... wait till they try to fly around the world.. Getting the proper clearances will take much longer than the trip itself... Just ask Dick Rutan

Re:The flight was the easy part

[ChrisMaple]

Fly a transpolar route above water the whole way. No problem with permissions. Just that little detail about no light over one pole or the other...

Re:The flight was the easy part

[jpapon]

Just that little detail about no light over one pole or the other...

Nah, if you fly in the Spring or Fall you'll get some light over both... I'd say the real issue with circumnavigating North-South is that you don't get to take advantage of air currents.

Also, when you get near the bottom you'll fall off!

Not Impressed

[android.dreamer]

I'm not impressed. Solar planes have been in existence for a while. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/solarFarm.html I really won't be impressed until it can carry cargo or passengers.

Re:Not Impressed

[mijelh]

Solar impulse is manned. That alone makes a huge difference with Helios, the UAV you link to.

Don't click post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaytube, now really?

Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[theNAM666]

Brussels is in Belgium. Obviously the Article was submitted by an American. I assume this was a Switzerland to Brussels flight. A few hundred kilometers. More if I see flight details.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[the eric conspiracy]

The article is posted on a non-American web site.

It is quite amazing how the various Europeans who post on this site manage to embarrass themselves so frequently.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[Anonymous Coward]

"Obviously the Article was submitted by an American."

Yeah, that's telling them! Those dumb Americans! I mean, it's not like they were developing solar-powered aircraft in back in the late 1970's or anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Penguin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Challenger

Clearly this example, whether a result of parapraxis or simple ignorance, is proof that all Americans just drool on themselves all day long.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[Anonymous Coward]

... is proof that all Americans just drool on themselves all day long.

I know I do!

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[moronoxyd]

Your statement would be interessting, if it had anything to do with reality.

Yes, the article was posted on a non-American website.
But guess what: The article nowhere says that Brussels is in Switzerland.

So this was added by the editor here at ./ or by the person submitting the story. Either of whom are most probably American.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:

After a flight lasting 12 hours 59 minutes, using no fuel and propelled by solar energy alone, Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels at 21h39 this evening (UTC +2). A crowd of supporters was there to celebrate the arrival in the European Communities’ capital of Bertrand Piccard’s and André Borschberg’s solar airplane.

The "Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels, Switzerland." part is an invention by the submitter or "editor".

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[Anonymous Coward]

The article never claims that Brussels is in Switzerland, only the /. summary does. Your move, America.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[the eric conspiracy]

Click on the author's name. You will find yourself on a Pakistani web site.

There is no evidence that the author is American.

Your turn Europe.

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[theNAM666]

What's an American doing in Pakistan? Shooting innocents again? :P

Re:Brussels is in Belgium / Belge

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you be more of an asshole?

Volatile

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when the plane is hit with a strong headwind? Mongolia?

Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[theNAM666]

Actual flight path in title. Approx 660km @ 50km / hr, with cleared airspace due to special needs. See http://www.solarimpulse.com/blog/2011/05/13/all-lights-at-green/ Herzliche Glückwünsche to the team.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual flight path in title. Approx 660km @ 50km / hr, with cleared airspace due to special needs.

See http://www.solarimpulse.com/blog/2011/05/13/all-lights-at-green/

Herzliche Glückwünsche to the team.

SZ? Wow, Swaziland to Belgium is quite a hike.
Switzerland is .ch .

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[theNAM666]

Evidently you were assuming I was using tlds? Doch nein.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Gadget_Guy]

SZ? Wow, Swaziland to Belgium is quite a hike.

And yet if you remove the superfluous punctuation from your Wikipedia search you find that SZ is the "the NATO country code for Switzerland". Swaziland would then be WZ in that system.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Chrisje]

Yeah, and we all live by NATO codes here on the continent. Right?

I would sooner point to the ISO3166 standard for country codes. There, Switzerland is still CH.

Having said that, ISO3166 doesn't quite match the vehicle codes used on the road.

I tend to look at the license plates on cars, where CH is Switzerland, but France would be F and Belgium would be B.

Here is a list of both the vehicle codes and the ISO3166 codes:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landcodes_voor_voertuigen

Oh, and by the way: Swaziland is SD respectively SZ. The NATO can kiss my ass.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Chrisje]

By the way, its because Switzerland is a confederacy of Helvetians (Confoederatio Helvetica) that they're CH.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Gadget_Guy]

Yeah, and we all live by NATO codes here on the continent. Right?

Actually, I don't care what you personally use as I am not making any advocacy statements here regarding country codes. Suffice it to say that the original poster does use that particular system, and they were not incorrect to do so (as the Anonymous Coward who responded had assumed).

You seem to be taking such a trivial matter rather personally. Your animosity towards NATO should not dictate how other people must express themselves.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[drolli]

We should use the latin names for these former roman provinces

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Chrisje]

I don't harbour any animosity towards NATO. I was just indicating that citing NATO codes while everyone I know in the civilized world uses the ISO standard or the Vehicle codes.

The reaction that said "superfluous punctuation" is a display of being a besserwisser. I felt it necessary to argue against a besserwisser. It's what I do. I takes one to know one, you see. ;)

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Gadget_Guy]

I don't harbour any animosity towards NATO. I was just indicating that citing NATO codes while everyone I know in the civilized world uses the ISO standard or the Vehicle codes.

I guess it was the "NATO can kiss my ass" that gave the impression of animosity, but it is no big drama. I have seen SZ used for Switzerland before. A simple Google search will bring up many examples. But I do not know why anybody uses any codes to signify country names, let alone why they would choose one standard over another. It seems that it would save more time for people to use the full country names than to cause the problems that this example has demonstrated.

The reaction that said "superfluous punctuation" is a display of being a besserwisser.

It is interesting that you would focus on that phrase, because I deliberately added the word "superfluous" to prevent any comedians from saying that httpenwikipediaorgwikisz was not a valid URL. I also deliberately chose the generic term "punctuation" to avoid having to specifically name it due to the various terms to describe it in difference regions (period, dot, full stop).

It seems my attempts to prevent any off-topic discussion resulting in exactly that.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[theNAM666]

Yeah yeah.

I used SZ because I'm used to the NATO designations and because CH is generally unfamiliar to an American audience, which is what we have here.

Re:Payerne (SZ) via Nancy (FR) to Brussels (BE)

[Chrisje]

Funny how neither you nor I are American.

I really wonder about current demographics on this site.

Re:I AM SOLAR POWWERED!

[Anonymous Coward]

wa da ta my damie

Design purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

No range, no speed, it will not replace neither B-747 nor F-15 any time soon not even if it can go all around the word. Maybe it was designed just for test or for other purposes. It could stay flying high over a city for long time while retransmitting radio signals or with radar watching for low flying planes or missiles. Comparing it to a solar powered car does not make sense to me because the most basic reason an airplane is different from a car is because it can easily flight over land, mountains and water and that is impossible for a car solar powered or otherwise.

Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

I am deeply sorry, but I have to agree with TheNAM666 here. This does look like a typical American write-up. Just like that time a security lady at an airport in the US was questioning me about why my Dutch passport was made in Switzerland. It got made at the consulate in Stockholm. Or that time when the Israeli border check said the same damn thing.

I have found that both Americans and Israelis have displayed the most spectacular levels of ignorance about the world outside of their own country. More so than other travelers and people I've met in my life. That's not to say all Americans and Israelis are stupid, far from it. It's just that the ratio of numbnuts to decent conversationalists is significantly higher.

Coolest example ever was when Dutch customs at Schiphol airport were looking for something because they were asking every passenger that passed through a certain spot where they just arrived from. They put the question in Dutch first. An American lady in front of me looked at the customs officer and in reply to his "Pardon Mevrouw, waar komt uw vlucht vandaan?" she barked an irritated "I don't speak German".

He smiled, inclined his head and replied "That's alright, madam. Neither do I."

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

I must apologize for the incident at the border crossing in Israel. Though most of the world seems unaware of it, our resources are very strained, and the education system is unfortunately rather poor in many areas. In contrast to the United States, I believe we are relatively aware of it, and would like to change it.

If that happened at an airport security check, and was not a ploy used to test you, it should be a reason for dismissal of the security agent. Please post again if it did.

The incident at Schiphol reminds me both of the depth of Dutch humour, and of the fact that while the Western Germanic languages are in fact very similar, speaking German in the Dutch lands (or not knowing the difference) is mistake not to be made twice. (IMO they are even kinder than most of Eastern Europe, to anyone who bothers to learn their language, much less some of the local dialects and customs).

The Swiss are somewhat a different story, but they have their own charms, as well.

It is hard for me to think any Schengen zone member (that excludes UK) would make the mistake of placing Brussels in Switzerland, except as a typo. And it should have been corrected by the moderators who accepted the article.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[i ate my neighbour]

I don't know about Hebrew, but in some languages the names Sweden and are Similar. They are "Isvec" and "Isvicre" in Turkish. Kind of like Australia and Austria. A common mistake the kids(and sometimes adults) make.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the submission was from a Pakistani blog? And that the /. summary is verbatim? Perhaps European geography is not their strong suit?

No, what am I thinking, that's crazy talk. Americans are dumb, that must be it.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[BlackPignouf]

While I mostly agree with your post, I'd like to say that Dutch and German are pretty similar. It might hurt your pride, but they're basically the same language with a slightly different grammar and pronunciation.

I can speak 5 languages, but I'm really not sure I could tell the difference between Swedish and Danish, or even Japanase/Korean/Chinese, especially if you take different accents and pronunciations into account.

If you think I'm a numbnut, well, you know where you can shove your West Germanic language.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[dutchd00d]

I can speak 5 languages, but I'm really not sure I could tell the difference between Swedish and Danish

I speak maybe 2.5 languages, and I am sure: I certainly couldn't tell the difference. But if someone at a Danish airport addresses me in a scandinavian-sounding language I'm not going to assume it's Swedish. Which is the equivalent of what happened here.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a reasonable assumption that somebody addressing you at a Dutch customs office would address you in Dutch, not German, even if you did not know either language for sure.

Think about it, if you flew over to Sweden and got addressed by a customs officer in an unfamiliar language which you determine could be either Swedish or Danish, which language would a reasonable person that is, as the GP put it, not a numbnut assume that it was? :-)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I mostly agree with your post, I'd like to say that Dutch and German are pretty similar. It might hurt your pride, but they're basically the same language with a slightly different grammar and pronunciation.

I can speak 5 languages, but I'm really not sure I could tell the difference between Swedish and Danish, or even Japanase/Korean/Chinese, especially if you take different accents and pronunciations into account.

If you think I'm a numbnut, well, you know where you can shove your West Germanic language.

Similar? British english and american english are similar. Dutch and German have the same base but are not similar. If you hear Japanase and Chinese you can here clearly a difference. Check out some Chinese videos on youtube. It doesn't matter if someone can speak 5 or 10 laguage. The point here is that if someone is writing public news he must be sure that such mistakes doesn't happen. Unfortunately it happens a lot. Especially from US people.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the political situation in Belgium, regarding the political will of many in Dutch-speaking Flanders to split off from Belgium into a seperate country - the situation of Brussels, an enclave within Flanders becomes a problem - in which country should Brussels (which is predominantly but not entirely French-speaking) lie?

Selling Brussels off to Switzerland, letting the other two split-up countries get to divide what's left, seems like a perversely interesting idea. :-)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[wvmarle]

This was about a question asked by a Dutch customs official when arriving in The Netherlands.

Common sense dictates that this person would be asking the question in Dutch, not German. And apparently repeated in English afterwards.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot outsources their editors to Pakistan now? That explains everything.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[kipling]

To a first order approximation, Swedish is Danish with all the consonants left in.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's swiss colonialism, they claim territory by landing solar planes on it. Therefore Belgium is now part of Switzerland. Welcome your new masters Belgians!

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[rolfwind]

I have found that both Americans and Israelis have displayed the most spectacular levels of ignorance about the world outside of their own country. More so than other travelers and people I've met in my life. That's not to say all Americans and Israelis are stupid, far from it. It's just that the ratio of numbnuts to decent conversationalists is significantly higher.

I'd blame the evening news more than anything. Human interest stories like firemen getting a cat out of the tree appear often, and we're talking major cities, not just rural news stations. Then comes sports and weather. "International news" is mostly just washington politics really. Little to no economics past the ever popular gas poutrages.

But then, as a European, you live within 1-day driving distance of a lot more countries and knowing what your nationals neighbors are up to and feeling may be more important. As an American, I don't even know the name of Canada's Prime Minister or Mexico's President.... sadly.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

"While I mostly agree with your post, I'd like to say that Dutch and German are pretty similar."

With ya so far ... it is true that we can converse with each other without really knowing the language all too well if you just speak slowly and keep the sentences simple. Especially true for Germans understanding dutch. But to go as far as calling it the same language with a slightly different grammar and pronunciation is completely wrong ....

The Dutch (Netherlands) speak the same language as the Belgians with slightly different grammar and pronunciation (although it's the exact same language).

Netherland = Belgium is like calling US and UK english the same ... it's the same language, you'll understand eachother, but there are differences ...

The dutch language has been influenced too much by both the Franks and the Angelsaksen for them to be called 'the same language'

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[TheRaven64]

The USA solved this problem a couple of hundred years ago. Washington DC, while geographically in Columbia, is politically outside any state. This avoids the problem of the national government being subject to the laws of a specific state (although it does mean that the government of the USA occasionally debates bills such as the traffic light timing in DC). It might be a good idea if we followed suit and made Brussels an independent country.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[jittles]

I wish the general consensus here in the US were to be more interested and respectful of our foreign friends (and enemies for that matter). There are those of us who know that Stockholm is actually in Sweden, and that they speak Dutch in the Netherlands. It saddens me because I know people here in the US who think that any language other than English is just a waste of time, and effort. I have actually been chastised by a woman for being fond of Spanish, and languages in general. Not everyone here is so ignorant, thankfully.

I do contend, though, that German and Dutch look very similar when written. Similar enough that I, who speak neither language, could probably not tell the difference in common writing. What has me totally flabbergasted is why someone would spend thousands of dollars to go to the Netherlands, or any other country, and not bother to learn a little about the culture and language before they go.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[jpapon]

The allies also solved this problem at the end of WW2 with Berlin. The real question is which Brussels will turn out to be "East Berlin"... Flemish or French Brussels?

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[isorox]

I must apologize for the incident at the border crossing in Israel. Though most of the world seems unaware of it, our resources are very strained, and the education system is unfortunately rather poor in many areas. In contrast to the United States, I believe we are relatively aware of it, and would like to change it.

If that happened at an airport security check, and was not a ploy used to test you, it should be a reason for dismissal of the security agent. Please post again if it did.

Really? I think it's a genuine question. Most passports are issues in the home country, so it's worth a follow up question. My last trip through TLV had an hour-long interrogation, involving me getting emails out and even running up eclipse. They seemed shocked that I'd been to Greece as well, an unusual location for us brits to go.

I'm dreading my next trip through TLV, as I'll have been to Gaza, which is bound to bring up questions.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[wimvds]

The Dutch (Netherlands) speak the same language as the Belgians with slightly different grammar and pronunciation (although it's the exact same language).

Now that would be a novelty, and we'd already have a government if that were the case :p. But sadly, only about 60% of the Belgians speaks Dutch (or Flemish), and the other 40% speak French (Walloon).

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[wimvds]

Oh, and where exactly is Brussels Airport (BRU) located numbnuts? In Zaventem, which - last time I checked - still is in Flanders, not Brussels, not Wallonia. The corridor proposed by the French imperialists doesn't include Zaventem either (Sint-Genesius-Rode will do), so selling it off to Switzerland is out of the question, next try :p.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese and Chinese are very distinct, even if you don't know any of either. They sound pretty substantially different.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear this Ignorant Americans thing too often from my pals, but actually they (and me too actually) other than European geography we are equally ignorant (geography wise of course :-).

So it's nice to know European geography if you are form Europe, but before you say bad things about other people who do not live here, just go and test your knowledge about Asia, Africa (or other continents), notice how little you know and feel ashamed for your past comments ;-).

Regards,
    Péter

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[jonescb]

The Dutch language is indeed similar to German, but it's also similar to English. To me it looks like a cross between the two. I'm not a linguist however.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Bing Tsher E]

An American lady in front of me looked at the customs officer and in reply to his "Pardon Mevrouw, waar komt uw vlucht vandaan?" she barked an irritated "I don't speak German".

He smiled, inclined his head and replied "That's alright, madam. Neither do I."

Being an American, she should have replied "You're Welcome"

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

American here. I concede that the majority of my fellow compatriots are extremely uninformed when it comes to other countries and languages, but to be fair, I heard an Italian Ryanair crewmember say the exact same thing to a Dutch passenger asking for coffee on a flight (Eindhoven > Ciampino; "I don't speak German"). Americans aren't the only ignorant travellers; there are Europeans out there guilty of it too!

(And whenever I pass through Schiphol, I endeavour to respond in Dutch when the security staff asks me questions--I'm not Dutch or anything, I just learned the language . . .)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

> [...] they're basically the same language with a slightly different grammar and pronunciation.

Do you really think that non having a grammatical case system is a small difference? Do you speak any case-based language?

In my experience, that difference alone is big enough.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in a bar in Seattle a few years ago, on the phone speaking dutch, when some idiot came up to me and said "Is that 'muslim' you're speaking ?". Come on America, Muslim isn't even a language, and I'm pale as hell..

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

BlackPig opineth:

>While I mostly agree with your post, I'd like to say that Dutch and German are pretty similar.
>It might hurt your pride, but they're basically the same language with a slightly different grammar and pronunciation.

So are English, Welsh, Dutch, and Danish. They're all Western Germanics. Virtually indistinguishable.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Oh, you want to apologize for incidents at Israel's borders? In that case you can keep 'm coming, buddy!

I lived in Israel for three years. And as a very frequent traveler for both business and for the purpose of visiting my family in the Netherlands, I have to say it was a good lesson in racism. I have never had to deal with a more rude and racist set of security people in my life. I have found the border people more courteous in any country I've been to, including Bahrain, Dubai, South Africa, the US and pretty much any country on the European continent.

As for the incident I spoke of... It was an El Al security person in Brussels. Firstly, orthodox Jews with millions of hand-luggage pieces were whizzing by me at a breakneck speed with all manner of nationalities, no questions asked. Me, a lone business traveler with one check in luggage and a laptop case for carry one, they asked what the purpose of my trip to Israel was, and my reply "I just live there, so I'm going home" seems to have triggered curiosity.

After asking me about my Swiss-made (Stockholm...) passport, and me explaining I used to live in Sweden, but then I moved to Israel, they continued to ask me about my trip to Brussels. When I told them I had done a three day business meeting with my colleagues at HP, they *ACTUALLY* asked me to open my laptop and *SHOW* them what the meeting had been about.

By this time I was swearing at them full force, all the while explaining how they'd get to see company confidential data over my dead body. I also asked them where the hell they get the chutzpah to harass an EU citizen on EU soil. After this, they basically insisted on actually *TELEPHONING* my Israeli girlfriend in Haifa, otherwise I would not be allowed on the plane. Mind you, at that point in time I was a tax paying denizen of Israel with all the visas, permits and what have you in his pocket. Including an Israeli teudat zehut which listed my address.

But this is not an isolated incident. I can go on and on about Israeli security checks inside and outside of Israel. But if you don't take my word for it, 9 out of 10 Dutchmen that I speak to that have been to Israel will have had similar experiences. I've seen a Russian businesswoman at Ben Gurion swear at the security staff and proclaim that she'd never do business with Israelis anymore on account of their rudeness and paranoia.

Furthermore, I have observed that while I was always in the "middle" queue at the airport, meaning non-Israeli, non-Jewish, the "middle" queue was still treated vastly better than the "Subhuman" queue where any Arabic-looking person would end up. At the end of the day, the full Israeli educational system seems geared towards creating somewhat uninformed, racist bigots. I know this, because my son is currently in the Israeli school system, and I can't begin to tell you the kind of BS his head gets filled with from birth onward.

You picked the wrong guy to give me the "incident should be grounds for dismissal" line, because I know exactly how Israel does its business. The whole country ought to be dismissed if you put it like you do. Trust me, my wife is ex IDF military police. I'm not making this up, and I'm not saying this because I am a closet anti-semite.

Not all Israelis are like that. I have splendid friends there, my wife is Israeli and generally speaking I didn't have a bad time in the country. But don't give me the "as opposed to the US, we're aware of it" line. I am not so sure the collective Israelis are aware of what their behaviour looks like. I can even cite half of Amsterdam's proprietors of cafes and restaurants. Most of them really rather see the Israelis going than coming because the buck earned isn't worth the rude manner in which these people carry themselves.

My experience with Americans is that while they sometimes really aren't too informed about other cultures, they do tend to behave in a cordial if not courteous manner while sober. So I'd really rather not you place yourself above the Americans with regards to behaving yourselves.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[drkoemans]

I too am dutch living in america and I have to kindly disagree with you. While I am not proud of many americans your generalization simply does apply broadly across europe. For example, when I was in Switzerland last, near Lake Como, they spoke exclusively Italian, and to the west, French, and they all spoke hochdeutch, but not necessarily first. Now, which of these languages is Swiss? Oh, what is that you say? There is no language called Swiss? Frankly, I'm a bit astounded she actually made the leap to German. Mexicans don't speak Mexican either. Unless you are familiar enough to know the dutch (which is hardly a common language here) have their own language, german is a fair assessment, and don't get me started on Flemish. Praise Buddha for dutch humor though, it is among the best in the world.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

In Holland you can get a second "clean" passport. All I needed to obtain one is a statement from my employer that I need to visit "conflicting countries" professionally.

That way, you can have all the Israeli stamps (and US, whatnot) in one passport, while you have a second passport that needs replacing every two years for the Arabic nations, Russia and all of those.

That shaves a lot off of the interrogations, so if you are eligible for a similar thing in the United Kingdom I would wholeheartedly recommend you get one.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Well, I happen to speak Swedish, German, Dutch, English, Norwegian and a bit of French. You are right in that anyone with a Nordic/Germanic background has a relatively easy time picking up the rest of 'm, and French being a Roman language has always posed me with a bigger challenge.

Having said that, Danish is just too weird. In writing it looks just like Norwegian, but when these people open their mouths the sounds that emanate from them are just indescribably odd and at odds with the written form.

The Norwegians seem to agree to my assessment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

Given your clarification, it sounds like the security personnel did what they were trained to do, which is use whatever means necessary to assess whether you are who you say you are, or if you are intent on killing someone or the like.

All it takes is one dying body in front of you, when it could have been prevented, to drive this point home in a concrete manner. Trust me.

Since I am not orthodox by far, the El Al and Tel Aviv security folks will usually give me a good and thorough questioning, right down to where I learned Hebrew and who from exactly, (etc etc), while checking the databases.

Or would you prefer to be on a flight with a bomb?

Screaming at El Al Security is, of course, certainly guaranteed to speed your passage. Try louder next time.

Apology withdrawn.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Sweden would be something like "shwaedia" while Switzerland is "Schweitz"-like in pronunciation. Probably because of Yiddish speakers, this adoption of the word.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Mein Darwin im Himmel, you make me wish I had MOD points. +Funny.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Well, the history of English is such that local tribesmen got their arses invaded by Romans, Scandinavians and Germanic folk, so English is actually a cross breed of the Roman, Germanic and Nordic languages with some Gaelic thrown in for good measure.

Sort of.

Not that Dutch is "pure" because there's plenty of Roman/Hellenistic influences, as well as Arabic. Our hard "G" sound comes from the Spanish (think José). The Spanish got that "G" from the Moors who ruled the peninsula for close to 700 years. So the Dutch G is ultimately Arabic. Then there's influences from Yiddish and god knows what else.

I guess there's no such thing as a "pure" language. ;)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Ah, you're one of these folks who are saying that:

1) The US had nothing to do with the creation of the socio-economic circumstances of post-WWI Germany, thus leading to WWII
2) The UK, Norway, Australia, Canada and the resistance movements all across Europe had nothing to do with the demise of the third Reich.

Nice. Very nice.

Although it would have been a funny comeback. ;)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Granted. Absolutely. There are astoundingly ignorant jackasses in most corners of the world, including Holland.

All you need to do is go to a camping site in the South of France or Spain, and you'll witness plenty of Holland's finest. Including the potatoes they seem to insist on lugging around to foreign countries.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

I actually went to an elementary school that made me study the world map and learn countries and capitals by heart. Still, time is a screwy thing.

A few years ago I made a similar comment to an American friend and he quizzed me on Africa, Asia and South America. I decided to brush up on Africa, is all I'm saying. ;) :)

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

I got that argument from an El Al security officer too once. He said "but we are the safest airline on the planet". This was in Schiphol Airport. I politely pointed out to him that El Al was the *only* air-line to lay waste to a residential area by crashing a cargo Boeing into an apartment building in Amsterdam, so his comment was mildly inappropriate. I lived across the road when it happened, 500 denizens of Amsterdam got killed, it was not terrorism.

Now I'm white as a lily, an EU citizen, Dutch to boot. I had a million credentials on me to prove that I was a tax paying Israeli denizen, and on top of that I have never heard of Dutch terrorists since the Dutch Revolt. Which ended in 1648, mind you. And we won, so we were called freedom fighters. As far as "doing your job" is concerned, I don't mind being asked who I am and being asked to produce documentation to prove it. I also don't mind answering questions about my purpose or circumstances. But when ham-handed attempts are made to infringe on my privacy, the intellectual property of my employer or when the people in question are just being rude and racist, I do start objecting.

When behaviour then isn't improved, I might start swearing at them. And yes, swearing at an Israeli while waving your arms wildly will get you results when polite discourse fails. It is wired into them, you can observe this on any street corner.

Now I moved to Israel in the middle of the second Lebanon war, and I moved out during the Gaza invasions at the end of 2008, and I've seen blood on the streets. I lived in Haifa during the shelling. Still, I would rather run the risk of being blown up myself than being responsible for the aggregation of a complete population in Townships under the heel of an army boot. If I have to choose between xenophobic paranoia or non-existence, I choose non-existence.

As a matter of fact, we have a racism problem in Holland right now. Our right wing politicians are Islamophobic, and personal friends of Lieberman and Co. They all seem to think the best way to end the Palestinian Problem is deportation of all of Gaza and the West Bank to Jordan. They also think the best way to deal with European Muslims is by deporting them or interning them into camps. And I am telling you that on the day that Geert Wilders becomes the PM of the Netherlands, I will burn my passport and become a Swede or Canadian.

My mother has seen racism. She was born in 1937. She's been through WWII as a kid, and she knows the face of Apartheid, if you will. A terrorist threat does not merit such an attitude. The Israelis of all people ought to know the dangers of racism.

So if you want to make this discussion political, fair enough. Let's start with two questions:

1) Why doesn't Israel have a constitution?
2) How does it feel to live in a theocratic Apartheids-regime?

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

By the way, KLM just does the regular security checks, and somehow they've managed to not get any of their planes blown up ever.

I think a different attitude towards the world does more to curb terrorism than all the profilers in the world.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

I am not going to argue with you if the claim that Israel's attitude towards the world might be due for a little change :).

The policy is in a nutshell that El Al is under greater threat and that there should be intelligent human verification of the identity and intent of travellers, with 100% accuracy. I invite you to consider how such a system would have fared on 9/11, in any other incident such as Lockerie, or how it might be preferable (though step on some toes) in place of the hit-or-miss, hope-we're-lucky regime of the US TSA today.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[polymeris]

Less than a year ago the Swiss rightwing party SVP was proposing an offer of annexation (google translation) to savoy and some other neighboring regions.

Seems they extended their offer!

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

LOL. Well played.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

Niihau, ma? /me opens Google maps.

Nope, neither Africa nor China have rearranged their borders and cities since I was last there.

Shezinii.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[theNAM666]

U kent het probleem met je Nederlandse volk? Geen gevoel voor humor.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[isorox]

Yes, I have one for us/Israel/India and one for Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq etc

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am deeply sorry, but I have to agree with TheNAM666 here. This does look like a typical American write-up. Just like that time a security lady at an airport in the US was questioning me about why my Dutch passport was made in Switzerland. It got made at the consulate in Stockholm. Or that time when the Israeli border check said the same damn thing.

I have found that both Americans and Israelis have displayed the most spectacular levels of ignorance about the world outside of their own country. More so than other travelers and people I've met in my life. That's not to say all Americans and Israelis are stupid, far from it. It's just that the ratio of numbnuts to decent conversationalists is significantly higher.

Coolest example ever was when Dutch customs at Schiphol airport were looking for something because they were asking every passenger that passed through a certain spot where they just arrived from. They put the question in Dutch first. An American lady in front of me looked at the customs officer and in reply to his "Pardon Mevrouw, waar komt uw vlucht vandaan?" she barked an irritated "I don't speak German".

He smiled, inclined his head and replied "That's alright, madam. Neither do I."

So what do you know about America? Where is ORD? How about BNA?

Our country is very vast. I remember having a German exchange student staying with us in Chicago and I asked her father (in Germany) a dentist, what we should do with her and he said we should take her for a drive to NYC for the day! Tell me how do you do this?

You see, my friend, it's all relative..............

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're really interested in languages, check out http://www.ethnologue.com. There you will find for example that German and English are sister languages, and Dutch and Swiss German as well, but in a different family. Did you know there are close to 7000 languages in the world? Check them out in the web version of Ethnologue.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Chrisje]

Listen, the amount of terrorist plots involving planes in the last forty years is breathtakingly small. So small in fact that Israel would be wise to focus on traffic safety and driving courses rather than terrorism. The amount of traffic deaths in the last 40 years in Israel is larger than the amount of MDK during war and terrorism. Given the one in a million risk factor of plane bombings, I'd say you can just do the physical checks and luggage checks without climbing into people's asses and violate their integrity as a person.

Specifically since if I had a long term plan not to get my luggage checked, all it would take is to move to Israel and befriend some Israelis. Because whenever I showed up with an Israeli friend or girlfriend at Ben Gurion or any El Al check in desk on the planet, they whizzed me through security no questions asked. This punches large holes into the notion of a 100% accurate, intelligent verification.

On top of that, if you subject one passenger to certain treatment, you need to subject the rest to the same treatment. I do not have a sense of humour when the "Gelijkheidsprincipe" is violated. Right now we have a fascist political movement in Holland that wants to violate the first article in our Constitution. All the way down from 1579, we've had clauses in constitution-like documents that guarantee the equal treatment of people of various religious and philosophical views.

Re:Brussels, Switzerland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Words are all made up anyway

Vote: Least impressive Solar story of the decade.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Less than three hundred miles!

Must have been a slow news day.

Geography

[RotateLeftByte]

So when i say I'm going from Washington to Denver by road and it takes less than 4 hours.
Or
I'm going from London to Paris by road and it takes less than an hour.
What countries am I in?

Re:Geography

[Bing Tsher E]

How about Brussels to Switzerland?

A city to a whole country?

That's like saying 'A trip from Tuscon to Texas.'

WHERE in Texas?

Re:Geography

[rduke15]

That's like saying 'A trip from Tuscon to Texas.'

Except that Texas is almost 17 times larger than Switzerland: 696'241 vs 41'285 km2.

Here's how to make flight work

[ShooterNeo]

Aircraft require more high density energy than any other thing humans do (besides spacecraft). Getting off the ground with any significant amount of cargo and traveling at a useful speed of several hundred knots requires many gigajoules of energy. Only fossil fuels have that kind of energy density and power output : even nuclear is too darn heavy compared to jet fuel.

In the long run, eventually we'll run out of recoverable fossil fuel. There'll still be plenty of it in the ground, but the energy cost to remove one barrel of oil will be too high for it to be economically feasible. (if it took 1/2 or 1/3 a barrel of oil in energy to recover one barrel of output, it would probably not even be worth it).

At that point, we'll have to convert all our cars and trucks to electrically driven vehicles : not from batteries, but from wires above or in the road (or both). Robotic vehicles that grab onto an overhead wire and a rail in the pavement at the same time on the straight aways, switching to ultra-capacitors when they change lanes or make turns is what I am thinking of.

We'll power everything with nuclear or vast arrays of solar and wind. And for airplanes, we'll have to make jet fuel synthetically from coal or even from CO2 extracted right from the air.

Everything I just named already exists. Some of the engineering details have not been worked out, but it's just a matter of money. So don't panic, the Western world will be fine.

Re:Here's how to make flight work

[91degrees]

Nuclear has seriously been considered for extremely long duration flights. The weight issue is the reactor and shielding rather than the fuel.

Re:Here's how to make flight work

[ShooterNeo]

And power output density. A fueled nuclear reactor has enormous amounts of energy stored in it, but the reactor can only safely release a small amount of energy at a time. Thus, the power developed is low relative to the weight of the reactor + turbines + shielding + safety equipment. That's just fine for land based, or even for a ship or submarine, but a serious problem for an aircraft.

Yes, there were experimental nuclear engines being developed for a robot bomber. The way they got around the shielding problem was there wasn't any - anyone on the ground would be exposed to the gamma ray flux from an unshielded nuclear reaction. Thus, the bomber wouldn't even need to drop it's nuclear payload...it could theoretically fly around in a loop and kill many people.

They did go so far as to build an actual prototype engine and test it on the ground somewhere. I'm going to go read up on it after I finish this post.

And for a spacecraft already in orbit, the shielding problem is solvable because you put the nuclear reactor out on a long pole, and only use a very small shield that creates a shadow that the main body of spacecraft stays in.

Anyways, no one is building fission fueled jetliners anytime soon or ever. And why would you want to? Suppose we had really cheap fission reactors in huge quantities, or we had cheap fusion. It would still be much simpler to leave the reactors on the ground and use the cheap energy produced to make jet fuel synthetically.

No mention of where it flew from...

[Squapper]

...it took of in Helsinki, Sweden.

Re:No mention of where it flew from...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent informative!

Re:No mention of where it flew from...

[stardaemon]

...it took of in Helsinki, Sweden.

Apparently it started over 200 years ago:)
I suspect either a misconfigured navigation system or time-travel device.

2x further than Solar Challenger

[erice]

The Solar Challenger did a 262km international flight from England to France in 1981. Given that the Solar Impulse has a max speed of 50km/h (from TFA) and was in the air almost 13 hours, that suggests a flight in the neighborhood of 600km. Not bad but then, one would expect some progress after 30 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Challenger

fake video

[Hognoxious]

The video is a fake. No way is Switzerland that flat.

Re:fake video

[91degrees]

N. It's Belgium. The write-up was wrong or the solar plane was so advanced that it could move Brussels several hundred miles to another country.

Re:fake video

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it moves too slowly to make a whooshing sound.

Brussels, Switzerland?

[knarf]

Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels, Switzerland

Switzerland is not a member of the EU so it does not make sense to move the de-facto capitol of said union there. Why not just keep it to Brussels, Belgium instead?

Last time I checked

[SpaghettiPattern]

Last time I checked Brussels was in Belgium.

A revoluton in Aviation? Hah!

[rossdee]

In 13 hours they only went 660 km? Thats not likely to be a practical alternative to jet powered planes. And its not like they can keep going much longer than that, solar power is not so good at night.

It's a sailplane

[jklovanc]

My main issue with Solar Impulse is that it is not a solar powered aircraft but a sailplane with a solar powered assist. It uses stored electricity to get to altitude then uses standard sailplane techniques to get where it is going. You may call thermals and ridge lift (lift crated by wind being pushed up hill) solar power but it has nothing to do with solar panels. They probably use electricity to move from one area of lift to another but it is not the main source of energy. Considering that the sailplane distance record is almost 1000km, flying 500km with some electrical assist is not a great feat.

Why is the stated average speed of Solar Impulse 70km/hr but it took 12+hours to go 500km (average forward speed 42km/h). The reason is that they spend half their time using local lift instead of going forward.

I would like to see how far Solar Impulse would fly if it took off, set a course and flew straight until it ran out of electricity. That would be a valid comparison with today's fossil fuelled aircraft.

Makes perfect sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way to stop the Flemish and French speakers fighting over Brussels is to make it part of neutral Switzerland! Inspired.

Re:Makes perfect sense

[polymeris]

I, for one, welcome our solar-powered Brussels-annexing Swiss overlords!

awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This is gonna make huge savings on flights from new york (Jamaica)

Brussels in Swiss ? Right!

[freaker_TuC]

Solar Impulse HB-SIA landed safely in Brussels, Switzerland.

I've always knew there was something cheesy about Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde!
I'm going to get my Swiss-Belgian passport right now!

Re:Brussels in Swiss ? Right!

[Anonymous Coward]

The title "Brussels in Swiss" is almost as stupid as "Brussels, Switzerland". Swiss is an adjective, the country is called Switzerland. Moreover, it seems stupid to me to use a city and a country name as a departure/destination pair. Or did you ever book a flight from Toronto to the U.S.?

Oh, and by the way, the plane took off in Payerne, Switzerland. If you read the post "all lights are green" you get that.

A Farnsworth quote comes to mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary isn't good (Brussels Switzerland?), but the articles suck.

Hrm, Slashdot isn't raising its standards to meet the rest of the world, the rest of the world is lowering theirs to meet slashdot...

Well, to be fair only that little portion is in English on the site. The rest of the page is written in some kind of Incomprehensible Dead Language. Crazy Gibberish!

Brussels, Switzerland?

[Syberz]

I thought the Swiss were always neutral, when did they invade Belgium?

While everyone is focused on the middle east, the Swiss are taking over Europe!

Aye Aye Picard

[sridharo]

Strangely, all notable figures by this name in Wikipedia are balloonists/scientists and so is the founder of this company. Now we know why it is Captain Picard in the Star Trek series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccard

idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Switzerland conquered Belgium?

Neat but what's the breakthrough?

[Aquitaine]

IAAP but IANAAE (I Am a Pilot but I Am Not an Aeronautical Engineer)

Other than a 'hey, that's cool' factor, I don't get what the big deal here is. There's not a lot of information in the article or the video, but the suggestion is that this is some kind of breakthrough in powered flight.

A little bit of background: Even a small, single-engine airplane will burn 6-8 gallons of aviation gas per hour, and AVGAS is about $6/gallon (in the US - probably even more in Europe), and this is one of several reasons why aviation is increasingly inaccessible -- in the US alone, we had about 800,000 pilots in 1980, but today we have under 600,000. You won't rent even a two-seater for much less than $90/hr, which turns into $120-130 if you have a flight instructor there too.

So there is a lot of attention on alternative power sources for airplanes, but the big problem is weight. Most single engine airplanes already have weight issues -- a lot of your 4-seater aircraft like the Cessna 172 may have spots for 4 people, but (particularly with Americans these days...) you're unlikely to get 4 adults in there without going over max takeoff weight, even if you dump out half your fuel.

So in the practical category of 'planes with people in them,' this isn't really relevant -- the thing is a sailplane with a solar-powered assist and has probably had every ounce of material removed that can be removed. It's still pretty cool, since there are definitely uses for long-endurance UAV aircraft out there - but even small airplanes aren't going to be using solar (not enough juice) or batteries (too heavy) anytime soon. There are some concept electric designs out there, but the ones I've read about are either too slow or can't stay up for very long. The HB-SIA can only operate under very calm wind conditions (50 km/h won't go anywhere at altitude with a head wind) and with a lot of extra separation done by ATC as the article says.

Re:Neat but what's the breakthrough?

[theNAM666]

This project has been going on for a while, with previous flights covered here on /. Evidently they're somewhat serious about making this practical (maybe not).

That said... they had to reroute a lot of airspace for this thing to fly, and the "only solar" thing seems a gimmick-- perhaps a gimmick that drives innovation, but a gimmick.

How about the batteries, for instance? How much lighter can you get such an energy source?

Re:Neat but what's the breakthrough?

[Anonymous Coward]

the breakthrough is in the demonstration that you can do a lot without fossil fuels. If you look on their website and the interviews they gave, you would see that to use this project to inspire people in finding solutions for our dependence on oil (products, cars, ...). The solar power flight is a tool, not a goal.

Focus on Solar

[Anonymous Coward]

Such endeavors though not ready to be practical yet, put focus on and prove the capabilities of solar energy

Liquid energy is not really mandatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microwave or lasers can power airplanes. Also research orbital solar power vs land based. Turns out that a solar cell in space gets about 6x more sunlight than on the ground.

immigration Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

clientsWelcome To Immigration Services Australia
  equally. We provide the most comprehensive visa and immigration advice available with free assessments for everyone who contacts us. Our offices span the globe and as a multi-national company we provide immigration solutions combining our global strength with local knowledge. We work with people from every country on earth. For free advice - simply complete our enquiry form for one of our experts to help you today.
The world leading authority on Immigration Law and visas assisting our individual and corporate

It can fly all night

[stephtara]

It can actually fly all night without interruption and then recharge batteries during the next day for the night after that: http://www.solarimpulse.com/blog/2010/07/08/keep-the-spirit-alive/ and http://www.gizmag.com/solar-impulse-aircraft-night-flight/15663/ (and obviously, the aim of this first prototype is to be a proof-of-concept and to carry a message, not compete with commercial airlines!)