With a name befitting a Swiss adventurer, Bertrand Piccard – who was the first to make a non-stop balloon flight that circumvented the entire globe – is set to fly the first solar powered plane across the U.S. this May.
Piccard comes from a long line of men destined for sensational headlines: his grandfather Auguste reached the unreachable reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere in a pressurized gondola and his father Jacques was one of the first to explore the deepest recesses of the Ocean’s floor. Now, on May 1st, Piccard hopes to disembark on a journey across American in his plane called the Solar Impulse HB-SIA.
With the wingspan of a commercial jetliner and the body size of a family sedan, the Solar Impulse has been blowing minds all over Europe since it was unveiled only a couple of years ago.
Hailed as one of the first truly energy efficient aircrafts, the Solar Impulse is made out of a lightweight carbon fiber and was designed to absorb enough energy from the sun that it can fly during the night. With 12,000 or so photovoltaic cells the Solar Impulse, with every 11 square feet, receives about 1.3 horsepower of light power, which is about the same as the Wright brothers had when they flew their first plane.
While the Solar Impulse most likely won’t replace traditional fuel powered commercial aircrafts, of course the military is trying to find a way to turn Piccard’s plane into a killing machine. Yet, Piccard and André Borschberg, who is the co-creator of the Solar Impulse, hope to make a slightly larger version and fly it around the world in the next couple of years.
In the meantime, they will take off from Nasa’s Silicon Valley research airbase for a five-stop flight across the nation that names airports after crazy people like this. From Phoenix to New York, Piccard and Borschberg will stop along the way raise awareness of efficient and renewable energy.
In the great tradition of the Wright Brothers, the lesser known Farman Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes and his Spruce Goose, Joe Kittenger and now Piccard – it will be interesting to see how this one turns out.
