Posted 12.03.2009 at 2:06 pm
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Considering the massive carbon emissions that come from burning jet fuel, air travel is in serious need of a green makeover. To that end, the folks over at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have been working on a solar-powered plane since 2003. Now, after six years of testing, they have finally managed to get the plane off the ground.
The flight wouldn't exactly impress Lindbergh, as the plane only lifted a yard off the ground for a 1,148 foot trip. In fact, due to the short nature of the flight, the engineers nicknamed the test "the flea hop". However, it is the first takeoff by a solar-powered plane carrying a pilot ever in history, and the plane behaved just as engineers predicted in their models.
The plane carries only one person, but has a wingspan of almost 200 feet. And despite that long wing length, the whole craft only weighs 3,527 pounds.
This test is the first in a serious of flights building up to a 2011 trans-Atlantic flight. Eventually, the engineers hope to circumnavigate the globe over the course of 25 days. Not quite Chuck Yaeger speed there, but not bad, considering the vehicle's powered entirely by the sun.
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Mr Stuart Fox, Please do your research next time. This is NOT the "first solar-powered plane carrying a pilot ever in history."
There have been many manned solar planes. The Gossamer Penguin for one. Most notably the Sunseeker. There are more but a simple search on Google will yield you quite a few. The designer of the Sunseeker was actually hired onto this Swiss project due to his experience in designing and flying a solar plane. The Sunseeker 1 was flown across the United States almost a decade ago!
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Penguin
www.solar-flight.com/index.htm (Sunseeker 1 and 2)
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Challenger
Honestly Popular Science, I expect better.
i have to agree with Fallingdown. PopSci really dropped the ball on this one. then again, maybe this is the first instance of a writer not checking his facts ever in history.
Did the writer mean to say that it is the first unassisted take-off by a piloted, solar-powered plane?
I can't be sure, but I thought the Gossamer series of planes all required a bit of a tow by a truck to get it up to speed for take-off.
And that take-offs tend to consume the most amount of power.