Green Energy Do It Yourself

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Solar Impulse HB-SIA First real flight (video)
The First flight is a fact! Solar impulse makes her first test flight from the military airborne field Payerne in Swiss. It took seven years and cost 61 million pounds, six countries are involved and around hundred adviser worked on this project.

The two men behind the scene.Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist and aeronaut who flew around the world in a balloon. (The Great Adventure, book review below)
And the great engineer André Borschberg he graduate in management science, a fighter pilot and a professional airplane and helicopter pilot.

The Plane
The Solar Impulse has wings with a span wide of 63.4 m (208 ft) and weights 1600 kilograms. To take of it uses 200m² (2,200 sq ft) of solar panels (12.000 pieces) and 4 electric propeller motors, (10 HP) each. And there is only one seat, for the pilot who crosses the sky with 70 kilometers per hour that will be around 43 mph.

First flight
On 26 June 2009, the Solar Impulse was first presented to the public in Switzerland. A short test flight, one meter above the ground was made on December 3 2009 by Marjus Scherdel. The team called this day "Unbelievable". The plane behave exactly as expected! On 7 April 2010 the HB-SIA underwent an extended 87 minute test flight piloted by Markus Scherdel. In contrast to earlier tests, the flight reached an altitude of 1,200 m (3,937 ft). History is written!

Later on..
Later this year the will make a flight during the night and in 2012 the have plans to make a trip around the world! Hopeful we're waiting for this great moment!
So for this story, it will be continued!
We will keep you informed.

Raul Green.
Author of Green Energy topics


Book discription: The Great Adventure - Bertrand Piccard

They could no longer be the first to climb Everest, reach the North and South Poles, sail around the globe, but they could be the first to fly around the world in a balloon - and they were. Written by the pilots, this is the account of their epic success. They describe the difficulties they faced and overcame during this feat of endurance.

Book review
Yes this book was great!
There aren't that many more firsts to do in the world, and they're all more categorical than anything else, i.e. first non-stop something, first solo something because all the highest mountains, North Poles, South Poles, source of the Niles, around the worlds have been done.

This one was the non-stop ballooning around the world. I'd heard about it at the time, but I never followed it closely. I picked it up on a whim just to see what the balloonists experienced (and because I also bought Vernes' 5 weeks in a balloon) and why it was so difficult.

The difficulty had to do with carrying all the equipment and supplies at all once. Obviously if multiple stops and resupplies had been allowed it would have been much easier, and so it was a matter of supplies, endurance, and also danger.

The book is basically a two person log or diary of the two balloonists, Bertrand Piccard from the great family of explorers and Brian Jones. It was somewhat dry, but also eventful. Each took turns relating their version of the trip from their point of view.

I enjoyed it because the book was exactly what I was looking for, a quite detailed telling of their trip. It was like Verne's 5 weeks in a balloon, except it was real. If you want to know what it was like to balloon around the world in 20 days, this is the book for you.

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