Solar Powered Plane Completes Cross-Country Flight

An anonymous reader writes "The Solar Impulse, a solar powered aircraft, landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport completing its historic cross-country flight. From the article: 'The flight plan for the revolutionary plane, powered by some 11,000 solar cells on its oversized wings, had called for it to pass the Statue of Liberty before landing early Sunday at New York. But an unexpected tear discovered on the left wing of the aircraft Saturday afternoon forced officials to scuttle the fly-by and proceed directly to JFK for a landing three hours earlier than scheduled. Pilot Andre Borschberg trumpeted the milestone of a plane capable of flying during the day and night, powered by solar energy, crossing the U.S. without the use of fuel.'"

Comments

With multiple stops along the way

[CastrTroy]

Although I realize this is probably a big achievement, I was a little disappointed to find out that this wasn't done in a single flight, but rather many smaller trips with stops in between. I can't believe this wasn't mentioned in the summary, Makes the news sound much more spectacular than it actually was. I really don't think you can count this as a cross-country flight when it had to make multiple stops along the way. Really, it's just a series of short flights in the same direction. It's not like when somebody runs across the country, and we just all assume it wasn't non-stop, with a plane we kind of assume that there wasn't any stops.

Toy

[jklovanc]

It left Phoenix Arizona May 22, 2013 and arrived at JFK 46 days later with a straight line distance of 2200 miles . That would be 47 miles per day. Sure there were a few stopovers but that is a very low daily mileage. Even if they flew one day in ten that is still only 470 miles per day.
I have a few questions for the makers of Solar Impulse;
1. How long does it stay on the ground charging the solar cells?
2. How often do they actually use the electric motor?
3. What percentage of time are they utilizing natural lift such as thermals and ridge lift?

I looked at their

web site

. It is a great PR site that give little or no technical information of the flight and how they are actually done. I would like to see the following;
1. Altitude logs for the flights,
2. Electric motor usage charts.
3. Battery charge level charts,
4. Exact track plots of the flights.
I bet we would have a very different picture of Solar Impulse if they let this information was let out.

It is my contention that Solar Impulse is a sailplane with enough electrical power to get to altitude and move between natural sources of lift. Conventional sailplanes can do almost everything that Solar Impulse does. The exception being taking off though there are some powered sailplanes that do that too.

Lets do a speed test to find the limits of the technology rather than a leisurely promotion trip. I am not impressed.

Re:Solar Flight, great and all . . .

[sjames]

The Wright Flyer wasn't all that practical either. No cargo, no passengers, one pilot, and less than 900 feet traveled.