The pilot of a solar-powered airplane on an around-the-world journey said Saturday that stopping in California’s Silicon Valley will help link the daring project to the pioneering spirit of the area.
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Piccard tweeted out photos from his fly-by of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco before touching down at Moffett Airfield following his 2,200-nautical-mile journey from Hawaii.
Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns behind the stick, since embarking on the world trip in March 2015, when the pair took-off from Abu Dhabi. This is the ninth leg of its circumnavigation. It took another month before weather conditions allowed the plane to leave Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii.
The post Solar plane completes risky 3-day flight over the Pacific Ocean appeared first on PBS NewsHour. It weighs just over 5,070 pounds – making it almost 200 times lighter than a Boeing 747 – and has a maximum speed of 90 miles per hour, about one-seventh of the Boeing’s.
The co-pilots and founders wanted to show that the project is not sci-fi, “but eccentric enough to appeal to the people’s emotions and get their adrenaline pumping”, the Solar Impulse website says.
An airplane, powered only by the sun, landed in Mountain View, Calif., early Sunday morning after three days of continuous flying from Hawaii.
“Today, if we were to replace to old polluting devices with modern clean technology, we could divide by two the Carbon dioxide emissions and at the same time we would create jobs and make a profit”, he told IDG News Service in an interview.
The aircraft’s wings are covered with solar cells that use energy from the sun to power the plane’s motors and propellers. The plane runs on stored energy at night.
Solar Impulse wants to mobilize this enthusiasm in favor of technologies that will allow decreased dependence on fossil fuels and induce positive emotions about renewable energies.
The aircraft was flown on that leg by Borschberg, whose 118-hour journey smashed the previous record of 76 hours and 45 minutes set by United States adventurer Steve Fossett in 2006.
“You demonstrate that clean technologies can achieve impossible goals, and if you can do it in the air then of course you can do it in the implementation of these technologies in every day life”, Piccard said.
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The pilots intend to cross the USA mainland next, aiming to reach NY by the start of June, 2016, before tackling the Atlantic Ocean.
