Solar-Powered Ultralight To Try 24-Hour Flight

blair1q writes "When the solar aircraft Solar Impulse lifts off from an airfield in Switzerland on a sunny day at the end of June, it will begin the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by power it collects from the sun. Former Swiss Air Force pilot Andre Borschberg and round-the-world balloonist Bertrand Piccard developed the aircraft, and Borschberg will be the pilot for this mission. 'The flight will require a lot of attention and concentration — the plane doesn't have an auto-pilot, it has to be flown for 24 hours straight.' For him, the most exciting part of the venture is 'being on the plane during the day and seeing the amount of energy increasing instead of decreasing as on a normal aircraft.'"

Re:Manned missions are just ego-wanking...

[Iamthecheese]

24 hours != indefinite. I didn't RTFA but I would bet my left testicle that it will start the flight with full batteries and end with nearly depleted ones. The REAL test will be when energy levels and consumables like lubricant are about the same before and after 24 hours in flight.

Re:24 hours straight? Dangerous!

[RMH101]

Yes, this occurred to me. Probably not legal for non-military purposes though as a) you've got to source them, and b) pilot a plane whilst using non-prescription drugs. I'm sure the local aviation authority would have something to say about the legality of the latter.

Re:What a feat!

[MadnessASAP]

How about a radio relay? Or weather monitoring? Hell those are the 2 blindingly obvious ones that I can think of in 30 seconds I`m sure anybody here could list off a dozen uses for these with a few minutes work.

Re:What a feat!

[Alioth]

The Wright Flyer was hardly a practical invention, either. But if we'd just listened to the naysayers, we wouldn't make any progress at all.

A low power electric aircraft, even without the solar cells and a battery pack instead, would have a great deal of uses where local flying is needed - for example, traffic reporting, news gathering and reporting (replacing expensive, thirsty and (to many people) obnoxiously noisy helicopters), law enforcement, aerial photography, recreational flying, radio relay, fish spotting, pipeline patrol, powerline patrol.

Projects like this which push material and electrical power delivery technology may move us a step nearer to practical, usable low powered clean, quiet electric aircraft for many of these jobs.

Re:The danger of solar power

[Mister Whirly]

Are you referring to the Spocker?