Sun powered...
The flight into Chongqing, China, happened at night. No moon. Pilot Bertrand Piccard nosed his plane into strong headwinds, and the turbulence was bad—not knock-you-up-and-down bad, but blow-you-off-the-runway bad. At one point the wind was so strong the plane was actually moving backward, Tom Randall reports on bloomberg.com.
A sudden cold front poses little threat to most planes, but the Solar Impulse 2 is no ordinary plane. It runs entirely off solar power, stored in four large batteries that allow it to fly through the night. Its solar-paneled wings stretch wider than a Boeing 747’s, but the ultra-light plane cruises at 40 miles an hour or so and carries just one traveler: the pilot, Randall wrote.
For more on how a small team is working to help Solar Impulse smash some records as the world's first solar plane to fly around the world, including a video: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-15/solar-impulse-sun-powered-plane-is-about-to-smash-some-records
Solar Impulse and the Golden Gate Bridge
This is a different kind of aviation story.
It's not about trying to set new altitude records.
It's not about attempts to cover greater distances in a single flight.
And, above all, it's not about trying to break speed records.
Here's what it is about...
A sudden cold front poses little threat to most planes, but the Solar Impulse 2 is no ordinary plane. It runs entirely off solar power, stored in four large batteries that allow it to fly through the night. Its solar-paneled wings stretch wider than a Boeing 747’s, but the ultra-light plane cruises at 40 miles an hour or so and carries just one traveler: the pilot, Randall wrote.
For more on how a small team is working to help Solar Impulse smash some records as the world's first solar plane to fly around the world, including a video: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-15/solar-impulse-sun-powered-plane-is-about-to-smash-some-records
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