Solar Impulse Overnight Flight: Electriflying Success!
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 10:16AM All photos from the Solar Impulse Facebook page
Perfect older test flight pic of the Solar Impulse and it's power supply: the sun
A huge congratulations goes out to Solar Impulse pilot André Borscherg and a very tired team of people that made the 26 hour overnight solar powered flight a success! It was a very exciting and impressive accomplishment, and puts this project well on its way to eventually flying around the world on nothing more than sun juice. More flight details will soon be posted at SolarImpulse.com.
Here's an interesting look at the fuselage and main spar structure during the build process. The massive box spar gives a good view of why that extremely long 208 foot wing is able to resist twist. Of course the structures are built primarily out of carbon fiber for both high strength and light weight. This huge airplane, with a wingspan essentially the same as a 747-400, has a max take off weight of just 4,400 pounds.
This view of the wing spar helps to give an idea of just how big it is. This also looks like my kind of place to work... a design studio, engineering department and testing and manufacturing facility all rolled into one!
A close up view of one of the four 10hp motor assemblies. I'm not certain, but it appears that the motor is the ribbed silver component that has the black duct (cooling?) coming out of it. The large black and silver rotating hub assembly at the front has a ring gear inside the aft silver part. That would put the motor shaft in the right place then to drive the hub that rides on a bearing at the end of the smaller silver cylinder mounted on the centerline.
It's really amazing that just four of these small motors are able to put the Solar Impulse into the sky. This is one of the reasons that when battery technology advances another several generations, I think we'll definitely see some form of practical electric flight for everyday use.
Congratulations again to the entire team of people that have made the Solar Impulse such a great success thus far!
Check out more interesting photos at the Solar Impulse Facebook page
Reader Comments (6)
Wow this is so cool. Never knew you could install solar system on airplanes.
Thank you for sharing the interesting story with us. As the solar system is being developed so fast and paid more attention, it will be applied in more industroes.
A great story, such admirable advance in technology today!
Nice post, thank you for sharing. I can not image that the solar power can be use in the plane manufacture. It means that the solar energy is applied in more areas for servicing people.
The solar power is now being used in most areas such as power provider, family usage and so on. It is predicted that the solar power will be developed much further in the future.
Whole Solar is an authorised distributor for several industry-leading brands of solar products, including RenewSys, Hitachi, Growatt, Apar, Polycab, Elmex, and Statcon. Whole Solar distributor products are constantly kept in stock in numerous warehouses for fast delivery to our customers at very competitive prices. We are the premier solar panel and solar inverter distributor, offering the highest quality installation services.