Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Solar Impulse 2, an attempt to raise awareness of the environmental issues, by flying around the world the world using solar energy, has been forced to abort an attempt to fly from Japan to Hawaii due to bad weather.
According to the National Geographic;
The Solar Impulse 2, a plane attempting to fly around the world using solar power, was forced to land Monday in Nagoya, Japan due to inclement weather.
The experimental aircraft — flown and financed by Swiss businessman and pilot André Borschberg — is now two months into its quest to become the first solar-powered plane to circumnavigate the Earth.
Read more: http://time.com/3903110/solar-impulse-plane/
The Solar Impulse information page spells out its green mission:
Since the ecological movement appeared on the scene in the 1970s, an irreconcilable conflict has divided those who want to protect nature, and who call for reductions in mobility, comfort and growth, from those in business and industry who defend people’s employment and purchasing power. Today, for the first time, this cleavage can be bridged, and the answer is clean technology. At last, technologies exist which can simultaneously protect the environment in a cost-effective manner and bring profits to companies.
The problem with our society is that, despite all the grand talk about sustainable development, we are a long way from making use of the clean technologies that are already available to us. Every hour, our world consumes around a million tons of petrol, not to mention other fossil fuels, spits back out into the atmosphere enough polluting emissions to disrupt the climate, and leaves half of the population stagnating in totally unacceptable living conditions. And yet, everything could already be so different…
Read more: http://info.solarimpulse.com/en/our-story/ambassador-of-the-future/
What can I say – I admire Borschberg’s courage at attempting such a difficult feat. But his failed attempt to fly to Hawaii was surely a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with renewables. Borschberg’s plane can’t carry cargo or passengers, it can barely carry its own weight. It would have been impossible to construct without high tech petroleum based plastics. And when the weather turned against him, Borschberg’s ingenuity and courage was helpless to overcome the inherent shortcomings of renewable energy.
It’s a nice toy. Useless for anything else.
“The journey started in March in Abu Dhabi, and the plane has stopped in Oman, India, Myanmar and China.”
leave the pilot out, get the thing up way high beyond the worst of the weather and into the sun, and you have a pretty decent mobile observation platform/drone.
Its an interesting niche product. What it isn’t is mainstream.
“get the thing up way high beyond the worst of the weather and into the sun, ”
Heed the words of Daedalus.
I’ve read that somebody is researching just such a plane for communications use. Cheaper than a bunch of cell towers for really remote areas.
@MarkW I think that “blimp” being built in the UK and supposed to become commercial next year is the ticket, can stay up for months. If there is anything that can replace planes for cargo and travel (slow at 100 mph) this blimp could be a good thing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416809/Return-zeppelin-Firm-unveils-gigantic-airship-revolutionise-goods-carried-world.html
They claim that these toys can replace the use of fossil fueled planes.
At over two months to go around the world, and carrying a single passenger to boot. These toys have a long way to go before they are replacing anything.
and carrying a single passenger to boot.
You mean death defying pilot, don’t you?
Solar Powered Airplanes will ultimately carry fewer passengers than Zeppelins ever did.
Their fragility to weather and wind shear will never get me aboard.
Not only that. It requires a whole lot of real airplanes for the crew to go around the world with it to supply it with all the necessary support. And it needed to get to Abu Dabi in a cargo-converted Jumbo jet
“Borschberg’s plane can’t carry cargo or passengers, it can barely carry its own weight.”
Oh that’s rich! Perfect metaphor for the greenie’s “Clean Tech” of today.
I don’t know what it’s been like around the world, but here in the UK this nonsense received uncritical coverage on just about every BBC news programme yesterday. Disgraceful.
Of course it will. The BBC is in full-on propaganda mode for Paris in December. There will climate change references slipped in everywhere. There will probably be an Eastenders special where they all discuss how it is worth than they thought. I could add a sarc for that but then it will turn out to be true.
A few years ago we used to have a thing called balance in the news.
After giving one bunch of people the chance to market their heap of bullcrap, it was standard for the article to complete will a reflection in the form of “however, critics point out that…”
In this particular case, they may point out that the project as a whole has been responsible for a massive consumption of fossil fuels and emission of CO2.
Or they might point to the fundamental physical limits which will prevent this principle from ever moving more than the most trivial loads in the most ideal weather conditions.
Or they might question whether this project has lead the general public to uprate their assessment of solar energy or to derate it.
Or psychologist may point out that the real motives behind such a stunt are the enjoyment of a technical challenge and the acquisition of status, excitement and money, and not necessarily the same “save the planet” motives as are touted by the ballooning and solar plane flying daredevils responsible.
But, since we now live in the new wonderland of uncritical grinning gullibility no such criticism will be found in any major media outlet.
And, since no alternative is now possible or acceptable, I have decided to teach myself to effect a permanent gullible grin.
I believe that John Cook is running a course in that.
After all, he is the world master.
It’s called Gullibility101x, or suchlike.
He would be better off in a glider….
Absolutely. Wind is free (as a troll stated recently) and, consequently, magical.
Nah the “around the world on only wind” gig was completed by a number of mariners already, the most notable being Captain James Cook who also did lots of useful work at the same time.
Also done in a balloon by Phineas Fogg about 150 years ago in only 80 days. By the end of this month, the solar plane will have covered much less ground, in a longer time frame and for more cost. The ecoterrorists are truly taking us backward.
Why would he (they!) be better off in a glider?
A glider is a fine flying aircraft. The one I flew was rated for 3 Gs, and was said to be capable of 5 Gs. Other gliders at the airport were marvels of aerodynamics, far surpassing what I had to fly. But even still, these planes were manuverable, and aerobatic to the point that an FAA inspector would have a fit if he saw half of what we did. And this was all in the mountains. Looking down at the runway, and up at the landmarks was all in a morning’s flight.
There is one thing about a glider, and it is this. There is no “go around” for a messed up landing approach. Every landing approach ends successfully. Or Not.
It was often said that gliders make good pilots.
20 horsepower, less than an ultralight, it basically IS a glider…
But you can’t take a glider over the sea …
Where is Jules Verne when you need him?
The plane may have been able to complete the flight if not for that storm caused by global warming. /sarc
BBC is already prepping for peak hurricane season!
1 June: BBC: Jonathan Amos: Solar Impulse: Zero-fuel plane makes forced Japan landing
Solar Impulse, the zero-fuel aeroplane, has landed in Japan after being forced to abort a Pacific crossing due to deteriorating weather ahead of it….
But a developing cold front over the ocean is blocking its path and pilot Andre Borschberg has decided to play safe by putting down in Nagoya…
Solar Impulse will now be tied down and protected from the elements in a mobile hangar while meteorologists and flight strategists look for a new possibility to cross the Pacific…
“When we took off from China two days ago, we thought we could go through the front and reach Hawaii. Now, we see the front has closed. It’s active. There’s rain, there’s icing – everything that’s dangerous for our aircraft. So we’ve decided to stop in Nagoya and wait for better weather to continue.”…
Ideally, the team needs to cross America, and then the Atlantic, before the hurricane season starts to ***peak in August.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32963426
Not to mention the typhoon season in the Pacific. There have been several nasty storms sweeping up past Japan already this season.
We do get plenty of them every year.
Carbon Fibre (Wings wider than a Boeing thingy)
Over half a tonne of batteries working at 300volts (not green stuff for sure)
A bunch of electronics and LEDs
Wind (something that a ram air turbine would like)
Cold (at extremes and no pressurisation)
20 minute sleeps
What could possibly go wrong?
Can it fly fast enough for a RAT to work?
nose down flying south perhaps?
If a ‘RAT’ wont work, how about …. Hamsters on wheels to drive the props ?
Hamsters might create too much power and tear the poor thing apart.
The same thing that stops EV in the upper Mid-West. You can’t run the heater / lights and get the same distance from the batteries.
Easy, use one of the motors like a generator, extract wind energy to run a resistive heater, problem solved…what what?
“…flown and financed by Swiss businessman and pilot André Borschberg.”
I wonder what his “business” is and if it doesn’t use a drop of fossil fuel to operate. I mean, his business operates entirely off the grid, right? Probably not. Just another good-time/Hollywood/leftist/feel-good hypocrite…
Whatever type of business it is, he’s able to leave it for months at a time.
http://andreborschberg.com/
An engineer by education and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in management science, André Borschberg has solid experience in creating and managing numerous technology projects, companies, and startups, as both an investor and an entrepreneur. His interest in innovative solutions, combined with his passion for aviation, have led him to team up with Bertrand Piccard to direct Solar Impulse and be one of the pilots who will fly the aircraft around the world.
Borschberg has been a member of highly regarded associations such as the prestigious World President’s Organization (WPO) and the Chief Executive Organisation (CEO). Sensitive to the well-being and condition of others, pro-active and always open to new experiences, he has also been active in the social field, including Restos du Coeur and assistance to the sick.
André Borschberg has also practised meditation and yoga for many years, developing the latter discipline in order to improve his resistance to fatigue and stress during the long flights planned for Solar Impulse. Married to Yasemin and father of three children, André Borschberg lives at Nyon in a house built with environmentally-friendly methods and materials. Solar Impulse lies at the crossroads of his passions and concerns : aviation, new technologies, ethics, respect for the environment and industrial ecology.
Call me malign for what I wrote here below, but It should not be so much different from a glider with a small electric motor.
Looking to it’s takeoff by night I suspect that it had the battery fully charged by an outlet connected to the power grid.
Massimo
[No] way. It would be a scandal if the plane was getting charged from the grid.
I’m laughing so hard it hurts.
Even it they don’t use external power of an electric grid: It’s simply a lie that the project people claim this flight doesn’t need any fossil fuel. In reality they have to burn large amounts of fossil fuels to make this flight happen!
See e.g. here:
http://notrickszone.com/2015/03/15/solar-impulse-2-flight-around-the-world-without-a-drop-of-fuel-in-fact-will-burn-tens-of-thousands-of-liters/#sthash.Pw5dsOhT.dpbs
Oops, typo alarm… – Sorry!
It should be “Even IF they don’t use external power of an electric grid…” of course.
Here’s a report of its landing in Myanmar: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/solar-plane-leaves-india-next-stop-myanmar-055852047.html. An extract:
“Two other aircraft — an ATR 72 and Ilyushin 76 — were carrying equipment for the solar plane and a 70 support staff, said Soe Paing, a member of the plane’s local task force team. Myanmar’s government was picking up the tab for the 20,000 gallons of fuel needed for the support planes on the Mandalay leg, he said.”
And here’s a video of an Ilyushin IL-76 taking off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi_6zkIl-EU
@guenier
Thank you for the info and links.
I was slightly amused by the statement that the pilot would have to bail out rather than ditch the aircraft because of the danger of electrocution. Given that the thing flies at about walking pace*, how far apart in the water would it and the pilot be and what would be the radius of the electrical danger area? Further, if any of the pv panels float, presumably they would keep generating until the sun goes down. Unintended issues?
* In the head photograph, the aircraft appears to be still airborne with cyclists not trying very hard to keep up.
Would not be a breeze flying through the ITCZ either.
I think this speaks volumes about greenalism, it has gone mad!
“It would have been impossible to construct without high tech petroleum based plastics.”
Zactly. The innovation here is not solar power, it is the plane itself. Slick marketing to make it about the solar power.
I’m thinking an 1850s clipper ship would be faster, and carry people and cargo.
“I’m thinking an 1850s clipper ship would be faster, and carry people and cargo.”
You have to admit that adding the Z axis makes the task a bit harder.
It probably sounded much better as just an idea on paper. To me these types of projects often illustrate the lack of ability of what the technology demonstration is trying to showcase.
That’s my point. If they can’t stick solar motors on a 737, or some other plane, they aren’t useful. Fabricating an exotic plane to use the solar motors only demonstrates the ability to make exotic planes.
The Flying Cloud holds the anchor-to-anchor record for an around-the-Horn trip from New York to San Francisco: 89 days, 8 hours in 1853 (beating her own previous record from 1851 by 13 hours). The Andrew Jackson in 1859-1861 did a pilot-to-pilot run in 89 days 4 hours. There were only three sub 90-day passages from New York to San Francisco by square-rigged ships; Andrew Jackson holds one of them and Flying Cloud holds the other two. 100 days was more typical of clipper ships, but before them regular merchant ships could take 200 days.
Let’s say a typical 1850’s clipper could make it in 100 days, roughly 16,000 miles. That translates to an average speed of 6.66 miles per hour, or 5.8 knots. The article doesn’t say exactly how far the Solar Impulse 2 has managed to go in the two months, but if it’s less than about 9,600 miles then your speculation is correct: an 1850’s clipper ship would be faster. Not to mention a lot more comfortable.
Oops, the Andrew Jackson record passage was 1859-1860, not 1859-1861.
Thanks to the link provided below by Alan Robertson (http://www.solarimpulse.com/widget-rtw_wrapup), I can now calculate the relative speeds of Solar Impulse 2 and an 1850’s clipper ship.
Solar Impulse 2 has as of this moment covered 10,784 km (6,701 mi) in 85 days 16 hours and some change, or a total of 2,056 hours for an average speed of 3.26 miles per hour / 5.25 km per hour / 2.83 knots — just under half the speed of a clipper ship.
Somehow Around the World in 300 Days doesn’t quite stir the imagination like the original.
So not only is a clipper ship faster, but it has a lower carbon footprint as well — wood, canvas and hemp line are all carbon-neutral. Use whale oil for the lanterns and it’s 100% renewable energy.
“An 1850s clipper ship would be faster.”
Heh heh. That really puts this publicity stunt in perspective.
We get this everyday on sat tv. Swiss Re is driving it and milking it with daily infomercials.The claims go off the wall. The self righteous smarm, vomit inducing.
Ah, I wondered what this was all about when I cought an image of the tail end of the plane. I hope no taxpayer money was wasted on this. Does anyone remember the “Gossamer Condor” from the 1970’s, a human powered aircraft?
Of course. However, I forgot about the various first solar planes. Some need battery power charged the day before:
Unmanned, 1974: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstroFlight_Sunrise
Manned, 1979: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauro_Solar_Riser – needed soaring assist
Manned, 1979: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-Powered_Aircraft_Developments_Solar_One
Their budget was too small to buy enough PV cells to fully power the plane.
Current battery design and PV performance make solar flight a lot easier. Payload design, not so much. Maybe they can ship dried mushrooms.
Mushrooms in the dark? Are you silly man?
Solar Impulse is accompanied on its whole trip by a “real”, fossil fuel powered plane to carry spare parts and support crew. While the experience will surely help in the development of energy technology, it also shows the limitations.
We have had wind “powered” transportation systems for centuries: sail boats, surf boards, kites, gliders, etc. but none of them has made enough technological advances to become exploitable on a larger scale.
I seem to recall that all major commerce was conducted with wind power for hundreds of years … seems large scale to me …
“While the experience will surely help in the development of energy technology”
How’s that?
That’s a good question: Which is faster, a sail boat or a solar powered airplane? (For now, a sail boat is winning, but not inland.)
I recall someone a couplle of years ago trying to convice me that a wind turbined aircraft driving electic motors driving propellors was a viable alternative to AVGAS. Seriously!
I remember a letter to the editor of Popular Mechanics many years ago, touting the benefits of filling the tires and all the empty spaces in the body of a car with helium. Thus cutting weight and thus reducing gas mileage.
Fill them with vacuum. Even lighter than helium.
Having worked in the motor industry, while there are “empty spaces” in a typical car body, and there are, they are not sealed. So all the sealing would add extra weight, and probably, negating any effect helium would have.
You should not want to use helium anyway, especially if you worked with helium before, so you well know that helium escapes by osmoses any closed container you design! 🙂
Have a great day.
Massimo
Massimo PORZIO
At least He has the decency to stay inside metal pipes and pipe welds and valves. Pressurized Hydrogen goes right through the walls of the pipes. When it is not embrittling and further cracking the welds themselves by granular corrosion.
That’s more a problem with hydrogen.
HI RACookPE1978 & Patrick,
no, helium (like hydrogen) pass trough pipes and valves indeed.
It’s just inert instead of highly reactive, but it is almost the same beast to keep it confined in a delimited space.
This is because helium molecule is monatomic while hydrogen molecule is diatomic, so the first is almost of the same size of the second.
Since is difficult to establish with precision a size comparison between molecules of different shape, some report helium molecule greater than hydrogen one, other report vice versa. AFIK no one knows for sure.
The first proof of what I say is that NMR in hospitals laboratory have to be checked weekly for refilling the superconductors coolers, this despite the helium container is surrounded by a second container filled with liquid nitrogen, which s the state of the art for containing helium, The second proof is that the state of the art for checking pipes leakage is achieved using helium.
Have a great day.
Massimo
The irony is building this plane was only possible thanks to the type of ‘evil fossil fuel industries ‘ the greens despise , where else do they think all the light weight tech materials came from .
If he does it will be quite a achievement but one simply not possible without the type of industry the ideology behind this idea is opposed to.
And it is odd to think that the first round the world flight in 1924 used a plane with far more ‘natural’ materials in its construction than the solar one.
This fiasco ranks alongside the global warming “scientific research” ship marooned so very expensively in the sea ice in Antartica last year – ice that the “scientists” (not to mention an army of worthy green media people) on board simply did not expect to find.
Oh dear!
Given its hopeless, unsustainable power supply, am I the only one who finds it equally ironic that this flighless bird is grounded in “the land of the rising sun”?
Note the youtube above, even there they deceive. Its a flight across half the Pacific not The Pacific.
Renewable energy = unreliable energy
Whattabuncha wet blankets.
Flying a solar powered airplane over the ocean at night, that takes a big pair of batteries.
and a big pair of b@lls!
Phillip Bratby
You say, “Renewable energy = unreliable energy”.
Yes, it is the old, old story; e.g.
If windpower were viable then oil tankers would be sailing ships.
Excepting hydropower, renewables are, always have been, and for any foreseeable future always will be expensive, inefficient and unreliable.
Richard
a novelty – like the – gossamer albatross
The whole “raise awareness” thing is getting really old. Why can’t they just admit that they want to fly a solar powered plane around the world because – duh – it is a seriously cool thing to do, and because they just want to see if they can. I bet that is why most of the engineers who built the thing are involved. Is anyone really fooled by this pretense that they are all oh-so-serious environmentalists and they are only doing it out of some deep concern to “raise awareness of environmental issues”. Who do they think they are fooling.
The” final meeting” video of the team is a real hoot…
“Raise awareness” is a code phrase for doing something goofy on a corporate tab. A couple of Activist /scientists recently ” raised our awareness ” about the dangers of water skiing in the Arctic.
This reminds me very much of the first test flight of Concorde, the press were going into overdrive about how it would change the future of flight. One expert on UK TV was asked the question where will supersonic passenger flight go from here, his answer was “nowhere”. I cannot remember his name, but his answer in 1967 was well before the price rises in oil in the 1970’s.
I admire the technology of both Solar Impulse 2 (whatever happened to Solar Impulse 1?) and Concorde, but the success of both was secondary to their futility!
But at least Concorde was a pretty aeroplane…unlike this heap of carbon fibre.
Very, very true!
Wast it the French that made it pretty?
At least the Concorde could cruise at around Mach1.6, replete with lots of passengers, luggage, crew, fancy nibbles and wine … a little bit of wind and/or cloud didn’t seem to matter
I do notice the rather “spartan” lack of restrooms, heating, cooling, air-conditioning, in-flight meals and refreshments, stereo-earphones, movies, in-flight wines or beers, stewardesses, flight attendants, co-pilots, passengers, cargo, or utility of any sort …..
“RACookPE1978
June 2, 2015 at 9:51 am”
Oh that was the Brittish version!
“Wasn’t it the French that made it pretty?”
No. The design was basically mostly British. I used to have a next door neighbour who was a draughtsman who worked on parts of the design at B.A.C.: we had the frequent pleasure of the 11 a.m. flight to JFK passing over our gardens. The tale of how the French magically came up with a very similar design involves a leak of the British design for political reasons – tied into trying to persuade de Gaulle to let the UK into the EEC!
Bobburban:
Concorde cruised at Mach 2.
[But only over the ocean. .mod]
Perhaps it’s worth noting that Concorde managed circumnavigations both Eastbound (JFK-Toulouse-Dubai-Bangkok-Guam-Honolulu-Acapulco-JFK in 32 hours 49 min 3 sec) and Westbound (Lisbon-Santo Domingo-Acapulco-Honolulu-Guam-Bangkok-Bahrain-Lisbon 31 hours 27 min 49 sec). Times include refuelling stops.