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Solar Impulse 2 Plane Takes Off From Egypt On Final Leg Of World Tour (reuters.com)
How long would it take an airplane to fly around the world without using any fuel? About 22 days of actual air time, according to Fusion. Solar Impulse 2, an aircraft which is powered by solar energy, left Egypt on Sunday on the last leg of the first ever-fuel free flight around the world. The team behind it tweeted a few minutes ago that they have completed 91% of the final, last, conclusive flight. Reuters reports: Solar Impulse 2, a spindly single-seat plane, took off from Cairo in darkness en route to Abu Dhabi, its final destination, with a flight expected to take between 48 and 72 hours. The plane, which began its journey in Abu Dhabi in March 2015, has been piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies. "The round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi, but not the project," Piccard told Reuters a few days before takeoff. Solar Impulse flies without a drop of fuel, its four engines powered solely by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells in its wings. It relies on solar energy collected during the day and stored in batteries for electrical energy to fly at night. The carbon fiber plane, with a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747 and the weight of a family car can climb to about 8,500 meters (28,000 feet) and cruise at 55-100 kph (34-62 mph).
Starting in March of 2015 to now isn't 22 days. It may have only been in the air for 22 days, but the trip sounds like it took about 1 and a third years.
Beat that !!!!
No fuel? How does it fly with no fuel??? Magic rays?
But they are out to "build support for clean energy technologies", just like the Volvo Ocean race is to "build support for the ocean". It isn't just a bunch of rich guys avoiding real work. We promise.
Is there any reason that this plane couldn't have flown into the southern hemisphere for part of its flight? It's not like we don't have sunlight down south.
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This akin to those news reports that appear every so often, about students from some university breaking the distance world record on a solar car.. Really, almost anyone can do that. This silly solar plane is only slightly more difficult. Make it practical and inexpensive, and I'll be impressed. Till then, this is pretty much ridiculous.
Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 That broke the sound barrier. Wasn't useful for fighting or carrying cargo. All it did was go faster than sound.
Still 70 years later we only break the sound barrier on a limited bases. As its cost and safety are still large concerns.
Now lets say you take this solar technology and make solar power blimps, and we move to slow and steady transportation future.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"single-seat plane" ... "piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard"
So how exactly did this work?
Is there any reason that this plane couldn't have flown into the southern hemisphere for part of its flight? It's not like we don't have sunlight down south.
Hm-- if it never crossed south of the equator, it didn't really fly around the world, since it flew a route considerably shorter than a great circle.
I mean, if you go to Antarctica and walk in a circle of radius one meter around the south pole, you didn't really circumnavigate the globe on foot.
Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 That broke the sound barrier. Wasn't useful for fighting or carrying cargo. All it did was go faster than sound.
Still 70 years later we only break the sound barrier on a limited bases. As its cost and safety are still large concerns.
Uhhh... is your point that, 70 years from now, we will only use solar for flight on a limited basis because the cost to performance and weight ratio still sucks?
I think it's a neat achievement, but to attempt to tout that it is ecological or uses zero fuel is BS. The support crew still needs to travel from place to place on each landing point it made, effectively burning up way more fuel that it would take for one or two pilots to fly around the world using conventional aircraft. When it can do it all on its own, and hopefully non-stop, that will be a huge feat. Feel free to go unmanned for that - having a person on board shouldn't make much difference these days.
"From one town to another? My ass. It has been crashing to the ground more than in the air. This is hardly news except for the fact that it proved only one thing, that airplanes are highly impractical and cannot beat gravity. No, it didn't prove that it could be done..."
FFS. Get a grip. This is huge news - this is first aerial circumnavigation of the globe that hasn't involved fossil fuels. Closer to earth, the last time someone discovered such an environmentally friendly powered method of circumnavigation was when some kid stole his mother's bedsheets to create some shade on his raft and got blown across the lake, ie a long fucking time ago.
Are there some serious challenges to solar-powered flight? Hell yes. Is possible that some of those challenges remain insurmountable for practical purposes? Maybe. But that's no reason to dismiss this like you have. There were challenges with early cars too - the first Benz generated about 2/3HP from a 954cc engine and eventually reached a top speed of less than 10mph. Space flight too - The first orbital space vehicle weighed less than I do. Challenges didn't stop mankind developing fast fuel efficient powerful cars, nor from putting a football field-sized space station into orbit. Fortunately there are more people who care about progress than naysayers like you.
This family has a long history of aviation firsts, and I assume the pilot here is a grandson of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Piccard/ And yes, that's the same sirname which inspired Gene Roddenberry to create Jean-Luc.
M8 if it flew down under the equator the solar collectors would be on the wrong side of the wings ;)
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I mean, wind-powered ships have been doing this for over half a millennium now. Clearly solar has a lot of catching up to do.
And how many continents were discovered using solar power so far? I tell you, wind is where it's at!
That is actually not as "un funny" as it seems.
When the F16 was in the conception phase, they had the idea to disallow certain flight maneuvers. E.g. flying on the back etc. So they had a strict computer trying to interpret the pilots steering commands and keeping the plane in the air and follow that command as close as "reasonable".
Unfortunately they had sign error when calculating the normal vector of the planes orientation on the southern hemisphere.
Result: if you cross the equator the plane thinks you are flying upside down. According to "the rules" that was not allowed and you where flipped around. Then again: the pilot realized the plane is really flying upside down and tried to flip it around: but he could not, as the flight computer was exactly preventing that!
Interestingly this bug was found in the Simulators, before the plane even was flight ready. The idea of so much computer control as abandoned then.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They did not go in a straight line. According to this http://www.solarimpulse.com/widget-rtw_wrapup/ they so far did 42400km, which is well beyond earths circumference. And they're still in the air at the moment...
ROFL, the Russian dude in the balloon took 11 days while they took a coffee break. So, umm, wind power FTW.
This sounds less impressive every update :(
A little concerned about the route tho, Australia to Australia. Apparently same routa as last guy but sounds like cheating.
The Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in 4 hops in 1929, racking up a total flying time of 12d12h13m and a total elapsed start-to-finish time of 21d5h31m. The longest leg was Friedrichshafen, Germany to Kasumigaura, Japan; 11,743 km in 101h49m. The Pacific leg was 9634 km in 79h54m.
This was less than a year after completing the zeppelin, which was the first intercontinental commercial airship in the world. There were no breakdowns during the entire operation, and no unexpected stops or layovers. There was a full load of paying passengers and commemorative mail. Passengers slept comfortably in cabins, ate meals in a dining room, and viewed the spectacular scenery through large windows (which could be opened) from an altitude of only around 300 meters.
Contrast that with a cluster foxtrot lasting 2 years, taking 17 hops, and a total of 22 days flying time.
Every year engineering students build solar powered cars. The panels are slapped all over the car, the car has skinny wheels, one occupant, no baggage. The race is held every summer, as spring/fall/winter are impractical. The narrow wheels reduce drag, allowing them to still move, but are also impractical in inclement weather. Solar Impulse is like these cars. Its an interesting experiment. They had it so that someone could say "we can build planes and fly them", which really means "we built a one-off plane and over 1 1/3 years managed to fly it round the world, using multiple pilots fair weather and luck. In the 1890's balloons were famous for going "round the world in 80 days" That's only 2 months and 20 days. If only this aircraft were as fast as a hot air balloon from the 1890's, then people would be more impressed. Good first effort though. You could probably double the power output by installing a second sun. Just saying that if you take an energy source up there with you, its probably more than you can get in flight.
Given the plane is composite not aluminium, your post starts with bullshit, and finishes the same way.
But there is no way a mph unit is faster than kph: 55-100 kph (34-62 mph) . 100 kph = 115 mph