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Solar Impulse 2, a fully electric plane, has landed in California after its team spent months fixing a problem with overheated batteries:
An experimental plane flying around the world without a single drop of fuel landed in California after a two-and-a-half day flight across the Pacific. Piloted by Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse 2 touched down in Mountain View just before midnight (3 a.m. ET). "It's a new era. It's not science fiction. It's today," Piccard told CNN from California after his successful voyage. "It exists and clean technologies can do the impossible."
While Borschberg set a new record for the solo flight, clocking in at 117 hours and 52 minutes, a chain of events caused the batteries to overheat. It was only after he landed that the team discovered how bad the damage was. "We made a mistake with our batteries," Piccard said after the plane touched down in July. "It was a human mistake." And a mistake that took more than nine months to fix. Fast forward to this spring, and the Solar Impulse 2 has new batteries, a new cooling system that can be manually operated by the pilot, and $20 million in fresh funding to keep the mission up and running.
[...] After several stops in the United States, the pilots hope to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and then Europe or northern Africa. They plan to return to the Middle East by late summer, completing a 35,000-kilometer (27,000-mile) trip around the world.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:29PM
9 months and $20M in additional funding later, and they're on their way.
Were I on the "round the world" certification committee, I'd make 'em fly back around to Hawaii if they want to claim that "this plane" flew around the world.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:51PM
My thoughts as well.
If you stop and rebuild your machine after a major in-flight incident it doesn't sound like any kind of record should be allowed.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Monday April 25 2016, @12:14AM
Sure...ok...but has anyone else done it yet? In that case, I'd say the record stands once they make one complete circumnavigation of the Earth, but that record should be quite easy to beat since they stopped for nine months. I look forward to reading about your attempt.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 25 2016, @04:04AM
Little short on sponsors with $20M to "augment" the campaign with, at the moment.
I'm thinking, for $20M, with the ability to stop as often as you like for as long as you like, this should have been doable a long long time ago - more or less as soon as LiPo batteries came around.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/