The Solar Powered 'Solar Impulse' Aircraft Makes Her Maiden Flight
Test pilot Markus Scherdel flew the plane from a military airport in Payerne, Switzerland. The flight lasted 87 minutes, during which time the plane reached a maximum altitude of 5,500 feet and performed vaious aerial manoeuvers.
The aircraft has a huge wingspan of 63m, the same as a Boeing 737 jumbo jet – yet weighs only 1600kg, or the same as a small family car.
“There has never been an airplane of that kind that could fly — never an airplane so big, so light, using so little energy. So there were huge question marks for us,” said Bertrand Piccard, who is leading the project. In 1999, Piccard copiloted the first nonstop round-the-world balloon flight.
Engineers on the $93.5 million (£61.3 million) project have been conducting short tests since December, taking the plane no higher than 2 feet and flying no more than 1,000 feet in distance. A night flight is planned before July, and then a second plane will be built based on the results of those tests.
That plane will be the one to attempt the round-the-world flight planned for 2012.
“The goal is to fly day and night with no fuel. The goal is to demonstrate the importance of renewable energies, to show that with renewable energies we can achieve impossible things,” Piccard said.
Aviation experts said they see a future for renewable fuels in commercial aviation, but they predicted that biofuels from plants, algae or other sources were more likely to succeed than solar power.
“Solar energy does not have enough ‘energy density’ to power regular airplanes that are supposed to fly somewhere in a reasonably short time,” said Hans Weber, president of San Diego-based aviation consulting firm TECOP International, Inc. With solar planes, “the objective is only to stay aloft, not to go anywhere fast.”
Test pilot Markus Scherdel said Wednesday’s flight proved that the plane could take off and land safely and handles like a passenger jet.
“Everything worked as it should,” he said.
The circumnavigation will take time. With the engines providing only 40 horsepower, the plane will perform like a moped in the sky, at an average flight speed of 44 mph (70 kph). The trip will be divided into five stages — keeping the plane in the air for up to five days at a time.
Solar flight isn’t new, but Piccard’s project is the most ambitious.
In 1980, a fragile ultra-lightweight experimental solar plane called the Gossamer Penguin flew short demonstration flights with one pilot on board. A bigger project called the Solar Challenger flew a single pilot from France to England in 1981 in a trip lasting more than five hours.
Although it may seem like a distant dream, the aviation industry tends to move forward at high speed. In 1969 Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon – just 66 years after the first powered flight by the Wright brothers.
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