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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: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday July 29 2016, @08:16AM
Oh, I missed that part where they took more than a year to complete their trip.
Heck, 80 days should be a reasonable target.
I think there is a reason that the only organisms really using solar power don't move much. I suppose you can argue that reptiles use solar power as well, but the supplement it with protein.