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Solar Impulse 2 Arrives in Hawaii

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the made-it! dept.

They made it to Hawaii

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A plane powered by the sun's rays has landed in Hawaii after a record-breaking five-day journey across the Pacific Ocean from Japan.

http://westhawaiitoday.com/news/state-wire/solar-powered-plane-lands-hawaii-after-flight-japan

Solar Impulse Plane Lands in Hawaii

Phoenix666 writes:

Solar Impulse, the aeroplane that is powered only by the sun, has landed in Hawaii after making a historic 7,200km flight across the Pacific from Japan. Pilot Andre Borschberg brought the vehicle gently down on to the runway of Kalaeloa Airport at 05:55 local time (15:55 GMT; 16:55 BST).

The distance covered and the time spent in the air - 118 hours - are records for manned, solar-powered flight. The duration is also an absolute record for a solo, un-refuelled journey. Mr Borschberg's time betters that of the American adventurer Steve Fossett who spent 76 hours aloft in a single-seater jet in 2006.

Despite being in the cockpit for so long, the Swiss pilot told the BBC that he did not feel that tired: "Interestingly, not really. "I am also astonished. We got so much support during the flight from so many people; it gave me so much energy."

Pretty amazing feat. Not only the longest solo flight, but also without burning a drop of fuel.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by f4r on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:26PM

    by f4r (4515) on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:26PM (#204999)
    I suspect one reason might be that, to make an autopilot system that could fly the plane that reliably, it would probably be a greater investment than the plane itself. Commercial jets have crashed on autopilot before, due to somewhat simple things such as a frozen wind angle sensor (which was only frozen because the plane had been incorrectly washed after storage and water penetrated the internals). An alarm can only inform you of something that the system knows about, but can do nothing (and potentially make things worse) for things it doesn't know about. For an experimental craft like this, it is probably much easier to just marathon it like he did, instead of investing the significant time, money and effort in creating a one-off autopilot system.
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  • (Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday July 04 2015, @01:29PM

    by lentilla (1770) on Saturday July 04 2015, @01:29PM (#205007)

        If I was building an experimental aircraft, I think I could afford an autopilot - although it wouldn't be a particularly complicated or capable one. You can buy autopilots for boats in the few thousand dollar range. There's not much to them: a servo-arm that pulls and pushes the tiller and a computer that maintains the heading. That covers left/right so you'd need another one for up/down. Once the plane is up and flying, it's pretty much "maintain heading and altitude" probably for hours at a time. The computer can quite happily be told to alarm if the system can't maintain the course or other critical thresholds are reached.