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from the cell-of-an-achievement,-captain-piccard dept.
Sonnenseite reports:
History was made [July 26] when Bertrand Piccard gently touched the nose of the Solar Impulse 2 (SI2) aircraft down on to the hot, dry runway in Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emerites] at 4:05 am local time, marking the end point of an epic journey that began in this same spot 17 months ago.
The SI2's epic journey has covered 43,000km [26,700 miles], made 16 stops, crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and captured the world's imagination by doing all this without a single drop of fuel. Upon emerging from the one-man cockpit, Bertrand was immediately embraced by fellow pilot and Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg, who shared flying duties during the historic journey.
Covered in 17,248 SunPower solar cells, it was the sun what won it: Solar PV technology kept the plane in the skies and ensured there was enough juice in the four lithium polymer batteries to fly through the night.
Our previous coverage of Solar Impulse 2.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by subs on Friday July 29 2016, @12:31AM
And that's without assistance.
This is what makes this whole thing hilarious. It's literally faster to go solo, without assistance and non-stop in a fucking sailboat than it is to fly in that SI2. It's such a turd that as soon as a breeze picks up, they're grounded. Oh and there's a good reason why they flew eastward. If they tried it the other way around, there's a good chance they'd be going backwards in places. It's a little trick that mostly on pilots know about.