The Solar Impulse could be the plane of the future; powered purely by the sun’s energy, the machine, developed by a cadre of corporate partners (and two determined pilots) has completed several long-flight tests proving its technology. 

Imagine flying up the coast, the sun glistening on the deep blue ocean far below, and hearing…nothing. Instead of a jet-engine roar, you discern just the wind whistling by. The Solar Impulse plane gives just that experience for its pilot; like an almost-silent electric car, this plane runs on the power of the sun, no dirty fossil fuels required. It can fly for 26 straight hours (yes, even at night!) and just this week completed its first-ever flight across the United States, touching down at New York City’s JFK airport.

Ten years ago, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg launched a daunting project: to build a plane that would run on the power of the sun alone. Meant to carry a message about sustainability, challenge the orthodoxy of flying, and bring together technology and sustainability (not to mention some serious engineering) success has come with the vision of a few and the sweat of many.

The project cost over the past decade is, according to Piccard, “About half the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster movie,” a detail that’s both accurate (they’ve spent about $150 million so far) and a comment on what current society finds valuable enough to invest in. It’s also, all things considered, pretty cheap as far as world-changing experiments go.

So how does the plane actually work? Flying during the day when it’s sunny is simple; the plane’s giant wings (about the size of a 747 to carry the weight of a 3,500-pound plane body) are covered in solar panels; enough to get the electric engines up and running for takeoff. The plane is so light that it alights with just 500 feet of runway. And no matter how overcast the day, once it reaches 30,000 feet, above cloud cover, there’s solar power galore. While flying during the day, the plane continues to gather energy and store it in batteries; as the day fades, gliding comes into play. It takes about four hours to glide down to 5,00o feet, using no power (gravity is free). Then the plane can run on the stored solar energy in its batteries. Piccard explains, “There are two ways to store energy: there’s potential energy we can harvest at altitude and the other is chemical storage. Together, that gives us 12 hours of flying time, enough so you can fly through the night.” By the time you need more solar energy, the sun is rising. The Solar Impulse team has proven this experiment by flying for 26 straight hours.

One thing that’s not sustainable about this plane? “The pilot,” says Borschberg. “A person can fly a maximum of about 26 hours; but the plane is almost limitless,” he says, since it doesn’t have to stop to refuel (unlike a human being, who needs to rest, as well as eat—oh biology).

Putting together such a lightweight plane was a task that required all 79 corporate partners to dig deep into their R&D departments. Note that they aren’t sponsors; the companies identified on the plane, including Bayer, Swiss Re, Omega, and Schindler all contributed newly developed materials as well as cash. Since even regular glue was too heavy, Bayer MaterialScience developed one that has carbon tubes of nanofiber, and since temps at 30K feet are consistently -40C, extremely light insulating materials were developed (which will now be used in refrigerators and other more terrestrial applications). Due to the high degree of engineering (this is a Swiss project after all), the plane runs at 94 percent efficiency.

Next for the project is a second plane (this one will have a bathroom!) and be able to carry 3-4 people. When asked about the project’s next iteration Piccard said, “We’re going around the world; 500 hours of flying in April and June of 2015. [Let’s] get rid of limits and fly forever.”

Main Image courtesy Solar Impulse.

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Flying close to the sun has always been viewed as, well, inadvisable. But a lot has changed since Icarus went down hard. Today, prying apart the human need and desire to take wing with our over-reliance on fossil fuel, poses a significant challenge to creating a greener blue yonder.

Enter the Solar Impulse HB-SIA – and take note of its recent maiden flights culminating in a pure-solar energy voyage last Friday. The solar-powered airplane has wings boasting 12,000 solar cells powering four 10-horsepower engines, and a span matching that of a 747 (about 200 feet). It took off for the first time in Switzerland on April 7th and flew for 87 minutes at heights reaching just under 4,000 feet. German Pilot Markus Scherdel took the aircraft (which weighs about the same as a mid-size sedan) on its first zero-emission spin, performing gentle maneuvers at speeds of about 30 miles per hour. Then on May 28th, André Borschberg took the plane on two more short flights, the second of which was powered only by the sun.

“Today the HB-SIA was sun-born,” said Borschberg, who activated the solar cells on his second flight, prompting the aircraft not only to produce electricity, but also to recharge its own batteries. “At this precise moment,” he said, “when the Solar Impulse produced more energy than it was currently consuming, the fulfillment of a dream – to fly solely on solar power, day and night – came one step closer to reality.”

The experimental aircraft is the brainchild of Solar Impulse co- founders Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard. Piccard says the $93-million-plus project is strictly for research purposes, but points to what might lie ahead in the arena of zero-emission aviation. “Solar impulse is intended to demonstrate what can be done already today by using these energies and applying new technologies that can save natural resources,” he said after the aircraft’s first test flight.

The practical goal of the Solar Impulse program, largely supported by private funding, is to use data from these initial flights to build a second aircraft that will complete a five-stage around-the-world flight by 2013. Obviously the leap from there to any commercial application is vast. But then again, how many years was it from Kitty Hawk to the jet engine?

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Aviation and space exploration suck – fossil fuel that is. Not to mention clean air, and quiet habitat. Can these industries, so essential to global scientific and economic progress, go green? The race is definitely on.

Offering hope, inspiring blog posts and tweets-a-plenty over the past two weeks were the test flight of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, which burns 20% less fuel than other passenger planes of its approximate size, and the unveiling of the world’s first, commercial passenger space craft, the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. SS2 is reportedly more fuel efficient than NASA’s spacecraft.

But such breakthroughs are just the start of what’s possible, in terms of fuel efficiency and other environmental advances, says Joe Parrish, vice president of research and development for Aurora Flight Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Aurora makes innovative aerospace products, including unmanned space vehicles, planes that can fit in your pocket, and planes with a 500-foot wingspan that can stay aloft for five years.

Working on the NASA N+3 “future commercial flight program” with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and the engine technology firm Pratt & Whitney, Aurora Flight Services’ research showed, in preliminary results, “that as much as 40% fuel reduction can be achieved through reduced cruise speed and redesign of aircraft,” Parrish reported.

In other words – a makeover and taking it easy!?

“You can’t take an existing aircraft and just reduce its speed to realize these environmental benefits. It’s not a matter of pulling back the throttle. But the redesigned aircraft does not look totally different from the old,” Parrish notes.

The more fuel efficient flying machine Aurora researchers envision (illustration, above) would be designed to cruise at mach 0.72 instead of the industry standard of mach 0.8. It would not have to use composite materials (which are lighter weight and used in the newly tested Boeing 787 Dreamliner) but it could use conventional aluminum and manufacturing technology, while still saving substantial amounts of fuel.

25% of costs for a typical airliner are spent on fuel, studies show. So the environmental benefits should deliver economic benefits, too.

Can the same efficiencies apply to space travel and space ships? As an industry, commercial space travel is too nascent to “go green,” Parrish says. But it is starting with a very ecological-minded entrepreneur, Richard Branson, along with pioneering spacecraft designer Burt Rutan. Branson famously supported and financed the development of alternative, renewable energy and signed the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006.

A report out on Wednesday (Dec. 16, 2009) from the American Lung Association showed “sixty percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air pollution levels,” even with new laws in place attempting to regulate and improve air quality. Every little bit of petroleum saved, and greenhouse gas emission avoided, helps.

Read up on the Boeing 787, and the SpaceshipTwo, and make your wishes for greener commercial and space flight known.

Basic Reading:

“With more than 300 future passengers already putting up the $200,000 for a seat on SpaceShipTwo, there appears to be a strong demand for the rides to the blackness of space…” – Wired.com

“Boeing’s first new aircraft for ten years represents a radical departure for the manufacturer, eschewing traditional aircraft materials in favour of composites, in the pursuit of efficiency and lightness. If the composites, comprising 50% of the aircraft by weight, do not perform as expected, major headaches could emerge.”- Center for Asia Pacific Aviation

“The [Boeing 787] Dreamliner will offer greater efficiency for airlines”¦ The plane [should] use 20% less fuel than today’s aircraft of comparable size, provide up to 45% more cargo capacity and include a new interior environment with cleaner air, larger windows, more stowage space, improved lighting and other conveniences.”- AviationRecord.com

Further Resources:

A NasaWatch blog entry in anticipation of the roll out of SpaceShipTwo, entitled “Big Party in the Mojave Tonight”

A blog entry at UniverseToday that includes photos and a video tour of the six-passenger vehicle, the SpaceShipTwo

A story in the New York Times entitled “A Takeoff and Hope for Boeing”

The official home page of N.A.S.A., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the U.S. Government

Image: Aurora

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by columnist Lora Kolodny.

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Last year Virgin Atlantic ran a Boeing 747-400 from London to Amsterdam using an aviation fuel mix containing coconut oil biofuel. Undoubtedly a triumph of technical engineering, it was also labeled “high-altitude greenwash” by environmentalists. The problem was a familiar one.

“If Virgin would power its entire fleet with biofuel, it would have to use about half of the UK’s arable land.”

– Jos Dings, European Federation of Transport and the Environment

Last week, a Continental Boeing 737-800 took a 90 minute flight with the help of something far more promising – algae. It’s the hottest fuel of the future, a creature thriving in hostile, even toxic, conditions and yielding enormous quantities of energy. Most importantly, it doesn’t grow on land – so the problem of food verses fuel disappears. Impressively, the fuel under trial doesn’t require any expensive modifications of aircraft technology and acts like standard aviation fuel at extreme temperatures. It all sounds a little too good to be true.

But is the money going into the right kind of aviation technology? A few days ago, Inhabitat featured the gorgeous design of the Aeolus helium-filled airship. No emissions, no noise to disrupt the biophony, and the second most common element in the universe filling its sail. (Or maybe helium isn’t the best choice. The world has remained leery of hydrogen-filled aircraft ever since the Hindenberg disaster of 1937. George Monbiot makes a good case for rediscovering hydrogen airships at The Guardian).

There’s no denying how green airship technology is – yet a 40-hour transatlantic crossing might be a bitter pill to swallow, and there’s a world of difference between weathering a storm in an airship and powering over it in a plane. Perhaps that’s where hybrid airships come in.

For now, jetting around on pond slime sounds a fine idea.

Image: OiMax

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