Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm then executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it is time
Speaker 1: for another classic episode of text Stuff. And you know what,
Speaker 1: I know you guys think when I'm doing these that
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of gliding along. So what better topic
Speaker 1: to cover than flying without fuel? What could that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: let's find out. We wanted to have a chance to
Speaker 1: chat about something that I talked about in a recent
Speaker 1: episode of Forward Thinking. So if you guys haven't checked
Speaker 1: out Forward Thinking, please do. I think I think a
Speaker 1: lot of tech Stuff fans would really enjoy that series.
Speaker 1: Joe is the head writer on Forward Thinking and has
Speaker 1: done amazing work. I have not written this episode, however,
Speaker 1: this episode was I thought really cool. And it's a
Speaker 1: about a solar powered aircraft. Yeah, which, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, that on its face sounds pretty crazy, especially
Speaker 1: if you have taken time to really look into solar
Speaker 1: power and not just its advantages but it's limitations. Right right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is obviously not the only solar powered aircraft that's
Speaker 1: ever been created, right, it's it's probably the coolest one
Speaker 1: ever created yet. And it is amazing that you can
Speaker 1: take a huge, heavy thing off the ground with the
Speaker 1: power of solar energy alone. That's just I mean, this
Speaker 1: is what powers your calculator, right, not not an airplane. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, I have a a battery pack in my
Speaker 1: in my backpack solar panel that it faces outward, and
Speaker 1: in theory, you can use solar energy to recharge the
Speaker 1: battery pack, which then you can use to recharge something
Speaker 1: like a smartphone. Right, that's the basic premise of this backpack.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. If I want to recharge that battery
Speaker 1: using solar power, I have to have it in the
Speaker 1: sun for twelve consecutive of hours. One doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be consecutive, but twelve hours to get a full charge.
Speaker 1: Whereas if I were to plug it into the wall,
Speaker 1: it's an hour and a half maybe two hours total
Speaker 1: to charge it all the way up, maybe even less
Speaker 1: than that. So it just shows that that solar power,
Speaker 1: you know, getting a lot of energy from it is
Speaker 1: a challenge. Now, obviously the solar panel that's in my
Speaker 1: backpack is not what you would consider bleeding edge. No,
Speaker 1: it's probably not the best that our current science has
Speaker 1: to offer. It's probably not even on the top near
Speaker 1: the top line for consumer tech right now, because what's
Speaker 1: available on the consumer side is a big drop down
Speaker 1: from the cutting edge best of the best. So, if
Speaker 1: you are getting a solar panel that has been designed
Speaker 1: to be as efficient as possible, we're talking top of
Speaker 1: the line. This is the stuff that NASA is going
Speaker 1: to use, right, You're going to top out somewhere around
Speaker 1: forty to efficiency. And what you're talking about there is
Speaker 1: how much of the energy from the sun you're convert ing, right,
Speaker 1: So you're you're not even starting necessarily with a very
Speaker 1: high number. It's just how much of that solar energy
Speaker 1: is arriving at the panels, which is obviously going to
Speaker 1: be less than say the energy density of gasoline or
Speaker 1: something like that, far less, far less. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: getting you're getting this, You're you're losing six the energy
Speaker 1: that hits the panel ra off the bat. Then that
Speaker 1: ends up being converted into electricity, and it's not that
Speaker 1: much per solar panel, Like an individual solar panel doesn't
Speaker 1: put out that much electricity, even if it's really efficient,
Speaker 1: it's not putting out that much. That's why whenever you
Speaker 1: talk about really using solar panels effectively, you're talking about
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of solar panels, right, they
Speaker 1: have individual solar cells in them, and there might be
Speaker 1: thousands of these solar cells in one solar panel farm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're designing an airplane that's powered by solar panels,
Speaker 1: one of the big questions I would wonder is where
Speaker 1: are you going to put them? I mean, when I
Speaker 1: heard about this thing before I saw an image of it,
Speaker 1: what I pictured in my mind was like a football
Speaker 1: field sized flat surface with just the tiny little, you know,
Speaker 1: person strapped to the bottom of it. And that's not
Speaker 1: that far off in a way that probably wouldn't fly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely sign a plane. Yeah, you've gotta have
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of surface area, right. You have
Speaker 1: to have a lot of surface area for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: So the big reasons why you need a lot of
Speaker 1: surface area, which in planes means a wide wingspan because
Speaker 1: obviously if you made the fuselage or the body of
Speaker 1: the plane the biggest part, then you have to figure
Speaker 1: out how do you get something that bulky and heavy
Speaker 1: into the air and have it have the vehicle maintain
Speaker 1: enough thrust to keep it in the air, because I
Speaker 1: mean thrust is a really important part of this too.
Speaker 1: We we just established that solar panels aren't generating that
Speaker 1: much electricity, so they can't uh push a super powerful
Speaker 1: electric motor, and the electric motor is what's going to
Speaker 1: be turning the propellers that are going to provide the
Speaker 1: thrust necessary to get this plane in the air. So
Speaker 1: you have to keep weight in mind. You can't make
Speaker 1: it too heavy, and you still need all that service areas.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Well, what the folks over
Speaker 1: at Solar Impulse, Oh, yeah, we should have said, that's
Speaker 1: the one we're talking about, the solar Impulse. Solar Impulse
Speaker 1: A two is specifically what we're talking about. That there
Speaker 1: already has been a Solar Impulse one, which was kind
Speaker 1: of a proof of concept vehicle that they built in
Speaker 1: order to test out the different engineering approaches they were
Speaker 1: going to take, because their goal is to have this circle,
Speaker 1: this this solar Impulse to go all the way around
Speaker 1: the Earth. I believe the demo of the solar Impulse
Speaker 1: one was a transcontinental flight, right It was from the
Speaker 1: West Coast to the United States to the east coast,
Speaker 1: and they had several legs of the journey. They even
Speaker 1: had set a record for the longest number the most
Speaker 1: number of flight hours consecutively for a manned solar powered aircraft.
Speaker 1: So if you're talking about unmanned aircraft, you end up
Speaker 1: having really long times because you don't have a human
Speaker 1: that you haven't Yeah, you don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: a person saying goodbye to their family for two weeks
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh So for the manned record, we're talking,
Speaker 1: uh twenty six hours, ten minutes and nineteen seconds, so
Speaker 1: more than a full day. And if you're thinking solar
Speaker 1: power and you're thinking, how the heck were they able
Speaker 1: to fly when there was no son, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: Uh but yeah, So so the records already been set.
Speaker 1: These were all proof of concepts that they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out what things are required for
Speaker 1: this dream of flying a solar powered aircraft all the
Speaker 1: way around the world. What's required for that to actually
Speaker 1: become a reality. So this wing span was the first thing,
Speaker 1: and the Solar Impulse two s wingspan. It's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: We're talking about seventy two meters, uh, so that's that's
Speaker 1: more than two and forty ft. We're talking about the uh,
Speaker 1: the width. That's greater than say a Boeing seven. But
Speaker 1: unlike a Bowing, it doesn't have a huge fuselage full
Speaker 1: of passengers and cargo. This has a tiny, tiny little compartment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's essentially a little The body of the plane is
Speaker 1: very small. It will allow the two the pilot and
Speaker 1: co pilot to sit side by side, just as in
Speaker 1: a traditional aircraft that's not you know, front and back
Speaker 1: like the old World War One and World War Two
Speaker 1: aircraft were turret. Yeah, no, I'm not gonna have to
Speaker 1: worry about that. Um. But yeah, it's it's relatively small,
Speaker 1: and it's made out of carbon fiber. So carbon fiber
Speaker 1: has a couple of advantages, right, It's pretty strong and
Speaker 1: it's really light compared to other materials. So you want
Speaker 1: to use something that's going to be resilient so I
Speaker 1: can withstand the rigors of air travel, and yeah, it
Speaker 1: can't be too heavy. So carbon fiber is what they
Speaker 1: went with. And in fact, the entire plane ends up
Speaker 1: being something like I think it's twenty six hundred, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: twenty that's around five thousand seventy pounds. That means that
Speaker 1: there are cars on the market that are heavier than
Speaker 1: this airplane. Is this airplane that has a wingspan wider
Speaker 1: than a Bowing seven. That's pretty crazy, It's pretty crazy,
Speaker 1: you know. I would imagine one reason that they can
Speaker 1: use those kind of fibers is because this airplane goes
Speaker 1: a lot slower than your standard passenger airplane, which obviously
Speaker 1: the faster you go, the more turbulence and friction you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to withstand, right, and uh yeah, So so
Speaker 1: with a Boeing example, for example, like your average commuter
Speaker 1: airline type of thing, you're talking about speeds in the
Speaker 1: five mile per hour range. With solar impulse too, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna go quite that fast. The top speed is
Speaker 1: something like eight per hour, eighty eight miles per hour. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: it does not require one point twenty one jiggabats for
Speaker 1: it to fly, or else it would go back. How
Speaker 1: many watts does it require? Not many at all? Really,
Speaker 1: because again, all right, do you know how many solar
Speaker 1: panels are actually on this seventeen thousand across that seventy's
Speaker 1: because I don't know how big they are. They're not.
Speaker 1: It's not that they're that big. Well, I mean, think
Speaker 1: of a seventy two wide wingspan. Um, you know, you're
Speaker 1: that's pretty huge. It's not that the panels themselves are
Speaker 1: the solar cells. I guess I should say it's not
Speaker 1: that the solar cells are that big, because really solar
Speaker 1: cells is more accurate than panels. Panels are like a
Speaker 1: collection of cells. But they're not that big. But the
Speaker 1: fact that there're seventeen thousand of them is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: And they're only driving four electric motors. And like I said,
Speaker 1: those electric motors turn electric propellers. The propellers are shaped
Speaker 1: in such a way to help provide the thrust needed
Speaker 1: so that you maintain the speed to uh to stay
Speaker 1: in the air. Those wide wings also are able to
Speaker 1: provide a lot of lift and stability and flight, although
Speaker 1: it is kind of tricky. You can't take off in
Speaker 1: windy conditions with this thing. You would imagine not because
Speaker 1: with such a wide wing span, a little bit of
Speaker 1: wind could easily get it to start tilting any which way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have another thing I'd also imagine is that the
Speaker 1: wider wing span allows it to stay aloft at lower speeds. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another thing. And it's also not going to go
Speaker 1: to the same sort of altitude that you would see
Speaker 1: with like a commuter jet or something that's not gonna
Speaker 1: go up to thirty feet. Well, I've been cruising without
Speaker 1: fuel for a while now, I think I'll just keep
Speaker 1: on going. But uh, you you folks out there, you
Speaker 1: look like you could use a little bit of a break,
Speaker 1: So we'll be right back. Okay, So we're doing around
Speaker 1: the world flight. It's at eighty eight miles per hour.
Speaker 1: That means at top speed eight eight miles per that's
Speaker 1: not average speed, that's top speed. That would mean there's
Speaker 1: going to be some stretches of this flight where the
Speaker 1: airplane is gonna have to stay in the air a
Speaker 1: really long time because there's no convenient way to land
Speaker 1: it at night when you're over say the Ocean, right,
Speaker 1: They're gonna be times where the you know, those oceans
Speaker 1: are so wide, there's no way the plane can make
Speaker 1: a trip across say the Atlantic, in a single day.
Speaker 1: Not at eighty eight miles per hour. It's gonna take
Speaker 1: multiple days and nights of flying for it to get
Speaker 1: from one point to another where it can safely land.
Speaker 1: Because they do plan on taking this trip through several
Speaker 1: legs where the plane will be able to land. Maintenance
Speaker 1: screws can come out and and do some repairs if necessary,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's not like it's going to
Speaker 1: do a full flight around the Earth without ever touching down.
Speaker 1: They will be touching down along the way and then
Speaker 1: taking back off and another leg of the journey. But
Speaker 1: still when you're over the ocean, you don't have that luxury.
Speaker 1: So you've got to be able to fly at night.
Speaker 1: So that's when they switched to monkey on a stationary
Speaker 1: bicycle power. You know, I recommended that. I thought it's
Speaker 1: time has come. I mean, it's an unproven technology, I'll
Speaker 1: grant you, but I really think we have not tapped
Speaker 1: the potential of monkey bicycles. No. I think this is
Speaker 1: they've got to be using some some pretty good batteries
Speaker 1: and that has to be a very important part of
Speaker 1: the design, right because batteries are heavy eat this airplane
Speaker 1: needs to be light. Yeah, they used uh, they created
Speaker 1: lithium batteries. They actually had. The engineers had to look
Speaker 1: at a way to make the batteries incredibly efficient and uh,
Speaker 1: they had to be able to charge quickly because if
Speaker 1: you aren't getting a full charge throughout the day, then
Speaker 1: while you're also driving those propellers, then that could become
Speaker 1: a problem at night, right if you want to remain aloft,
Speaker 1: that could be a serious problem. So they experiment with
Speaker 1: different electrolytes um, which, of course, as we know from Idiocracy,
Speaker 1: is the stuff that plants crave. But no, they experiment
Speaker 1: with a lot of different chemical compositions to try and
Speaker 1: make the most efficient batteries. So they went with lithium batteries.
Speaker 1: They are kind of think of like a long, thin
Speaker 1: almost like a film as opposed to a big battery pack.
Speaker 1: So it it's pretty remarkable the design, and they weigh
Speaker 1: The batteries weigh six thirty three k or about two
Speaker 1: thousand seventy seven pounds, which means that you know, the
Speaker 1: they weigh up little bit more than a quarter of
Speaker 1: the actual plane itself the batteries alone. So obviously batteries
Speaker 1: are heavy. They're important because you have to have that
Speaker 1: energy to tap into at night, Otherwise, once the sun
Speaker 1: starts to go down or it gets too cloudy, you're
Speaker 1: plane would plummet. And this isn't just a problem for planes,
Speaker 1: I mean it's especially a problem in planes, right, This
Speaker 1: is a problem for any electric vehicle, right, is is
Speaker 1: how to deal with this massive battery that's required to
Speaker 1: operate motors with this kind of power exactly, And it's
Speaker 1: something that we've seen not even not just in an
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, but electronics in general. We have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to say about this interesting episode, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take another quick break. The
Speaker 1: processing power has increased steadily over the years. We've got
Speaker 1: the whole observation of Moore's law where we're seeing it
Speaker 1: practically double every two years or so, depending upon your
Speaker 1: interpretation of the observation. Uh, well, then why haven't batteries
Speaker 1: kept pace with that? You know, I'm seeing my my
Speaker 1: mobile devices getting more powerful, but the batteries draining faster,
Speaker 1: so it's not as useful to me as long. And
Speaker 1: part of that is just because batteries aren't on that
Speaker 1: accelerated path. I mean, there's only so much we can
Speaker 1: do with chemistry. To be fair, they have come a
Speaker 1: long way. This is also a topic we talked about
Speaker 1: not too long ago on Forward Thinking, is how far
Speaker 1: batteries have come. And it is kind of amazing what
Speaker 1: we've achieved today. I mean, your standard lithium ion battery
Speaker 1: today is kind of a wonder work, it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The fact that you're able to recharge it so that
Speaker 1: the chemical the electrochemical reaction that's going on within the
Speaker 1: battery gives off electrons. I mean, that's the whole point
Speaker 1: of a battery. Otherwise it would be useless. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in a in an alkaline battery, this is an irreversible
Speaker 1: uh reaction, So the electrochemical reaction happens, electrons are given off.
Speaker 1: As a result, you can use those electrons to do work,
Speaker 1: thus electricity. But once it's drained, once that chemical reaction
Speaker 1: has gone to a certain point, you're not generating enough
Speaker 1: electrons for it to be useful anymore. You have a
Speaker 1: dead battery. Whereas with these lithium rechargeable batteries. There are
Speaker 1: non rechargeable types too, but with rechargeable batteries you can
Speaker 1: reverse that reaction by essentially forcing electrons back backward through
Speaker 1: that pathway. It's basically doing the whole thing backward. You're
Speaker 1: putting work into the battery the same way you took
Speaker 1: work out of it earlier. Yeah, So the fact that
Speaker 1: we've managed to do that and increase the efficiency even
Speaker 1: a little bit. Is the reason why something like the
Speaker 1: solar Impulse too is is possible. And again we're not
Speaker 1: going to see this actually fly around the world until
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, but they've already proven that it works
Speaker 1: with that first proof of concept vehicle that was able
Speaker 1: to stay up in the air for twenty six hours.
Speaker 1: The fact that it was able to charge the batteries,
Speaker 1: fly all the way through the night and continue, Um,
Speaker 1: you know they're fully certified to fly at night. It
Speaker 1: shows that there's been a lot of work done here.
Speaker 1: So we've got, uh, the energy side covered. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's going to be using solar power to drive
Speaker 1: the electric motors and day switched to battery at night.
Speaker 1: It's going to be able to fly really for as
Speaker 1: long as the pilot and co pid can stand. That
Speaker 1: was my question. Yeah, what's this gonna be like for
Speaker 1: the pilot incopilot? Okay, have you ever, Joe, have you
Speaker 1: ever traveled first class? Oh? No, okay, so I've traveled
Speaker 1: first class. Not to brag, but it's prett sweet. And
Speaker 1: once you traveled first class, how is the champagne and
Speaker 1: cheese select? We didn't have champagne. We had real pain,
Speaker 1: thank you, none of this champagne you guys talk about.
Speaker 1: Um no, but but I mean it's anyone who's traveled
Speaker 1: first or business class and then goes back to travel coach,
Speaker 1: the belly aching is unbearable, right, It's just this idea.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, you can't go back, by the way.
Speaker 1: I haven't traveled first or business in years, and and frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm still amazed that planes work, so I'm happy either way.
Speaker 1: But but there was a period shortly after that time
Speaker 1: where I was able to travel first or business where
Speaker 1: I was one of those unbearable people for that particular reason.
Speaker 1: I'm unbearable for many other reasons now, but for that
Speaker 1: particular reason where I can't believe this wonderful complaining. I know,
Speaker 1: flying coach, though, would seem like an amazing luxury compared
Speaker 1: to what the pilot and co pilot are going to
Speaker 1: have to be able to endure to make this round
Speaker 1: the world flight a possibility, because one of the things
Speaker 1: they're gonna have to, like I said, stay in the
Speaker 1: air for some of the estimates are as long as
Speaker 1: five days and nights, or perhaps even longer for just
Speaker 1: one leg of this journey. So for five days and nights,
Speaker 1: you are in a chair in a plane and you
Speaker 1: cannot go anywhere because there's no space. Every single ounce
Speaker 1: matters on that plane, every single inch counts, so there's
Speaker 1: no space in the back for one person to go
Speaker 1: and and collapse while the other one flies the plane. Instead,
Speaker 1: their chairs are going to be designed in such a
Speaker 1: way where they can lay back into a cot form
Speaker 1: and you can. The plane is going to have an autopilot,
Speaker 1: so they can sit there there heading and course and
Speaker 1: both catch them z s while they need to, and
Speaker 1: then wake up and everything should be fine. Um somehow
Speaker 1: I don't suspect that will happen. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: probably more likely that they're going to do their best
Speaker 1: to take shifts. But the nice thing is that they
Speaker 1: can set on autopilot and catch some rest if they
Speaker 1: need to. But alright, so we've got we've got laying
Speaker 1: down to rest, and we've got sitting up to operate.
Speaker 1: But there's still one important human activity besides the whole
Speaker 1: eating and drinking thing. They'll obviously have some food and
Speaker 1: water up there on the plane as well. There's one
Speaker 1: other important activity that we can't avoid. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: about to ask have the engineers factored into the plane's
Speaker 1: course the fact that it might be losing a bit
Speaker 1: of mass as it travels. So what we're alluding to
Speaker 1: is where do you poop? I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of the most popular questions on how stuff works,
Speaker 1: as main site is all about space toilets um. In
Speaker 1: this case, those fancy chairs I was talking about they
Speaker 1: double up as as both chairs and cots. Well, really
Speaker 1: they do triple duty because they're also lavatories. I had
Speaker 1: to do it. Joe. Joe is rolling his eyes, So everybody,
Speaker 1: we've already achieved some horrible pun hat trick. Everybody who
Speaker 1: misses Lauren's eye rolling, just that her spirit is living
Speaker 1: in Joe right now, even though Lauren herself is not
Speaker 1: in thet Yeah. So um, but no, it's it's true.
Speaker 1: The the actual chairs are going to do this this
Speaker 1: triple job of being the place where you sit, the
Speaker 1: place where you sleep, in the place where you have
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom because they couldn't incorporate a
Speaker 1: separate lavatory because again, every single bit of weight counts.
Speaker 1: It seems like there would be ventilation shues. Yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I haven't actually seen any illustrations or animations of how
Speaker 1: this actually works, Like, does does the does a little
Speaker 1: bit of the bottom of the chair just open up
Speaker 1: to the to the I mean, who knows? I honestly
Speaker 1: do not know the answer to that, because I haven't
Speaker 1: seen the illustrations I've seen. I've seen footage of them
Speaker 1: testing out the chairs, laying it back into cot form,
Speaker 1: but not the pooping. Well, here's a question I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know the answer to. Is the cabin pressurized?
Speaker 1: Are they flying at such an altitude that they don't
Speaker 1: have to press size the cabin? And now the pictures
Speaker 1: I've seen, I've seen them wearing essentially air masks as well,
Speaker 1: so I would imagine that the cabin is not pressurized.
Speaker 1: But I also imagine they're not typically flying in an
Speaker 1: altitude where that's too much of a problem. They did,
Speaker 1: as I saw, have have masks there because I saw
Speaker 1: a guy who essentially he pulls the mask aside in
Speaker 1: order to eat a little snack cake, drink a little water,
Speaker 1: put the mask back on, go on his merry way. Um,
Speaker 1: But whether or not the whole thing is pressurized, I
Speaker 1: don't think it is because again, that would require a
Speaker 1: lot of weight to be able to put in the
Speaker 1: systems necessary. You have to seal everything off, obviously, because
Speaker 1: if if you don't seal everything off, you can't maintain
Speaker 1: a pressure, and you know, it would just be escaping
Speaker 1: the whole time. Plus then you would have to have
Speaker 1: the mechanisms necessary to pressurize the cabin, and all of
Speaker 1: that adds weight. So really, when it comes to solar
Speaker 1: aircraft in general, not just the Solar Impulse, but any
Speaker 1: solar aircraft, anything that's not absolutely necessary to maintain flight
Speaker 1: tends to be left behind. So you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of the systems and a lot of the other niceties.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of solar aircraft don't even have
Speaker 1: landing gear. They have they have wheels that allow them
Speaker 1: to roll around when they're before they take off. Then
Speaker 1: once they take off they jettison the wheels because that's weight,
Speaker 1: like the fuel containers on the Space shuttle. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it means that when you're landing, you're not so much
Speaker 1: landing as you are having as controlled to crash as
Speaker 1: you possibly can, which I'm sure is nerve racking, but
Speaker 1: that's part of the design. So the plane is designed
Speaker 1: to have that kind of landing. It's not, you know,
Speaker 1: an emergency type thing. This is this is standard operating
Speaker 1: procedure onboard solar aircraft. And uh yeah, so, I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of I'm curious to see really how this
Speaker 1: continues to develop, what the experience ends up really being
Speaker 1: like for the pilot and co pilot, what it you know,
Speaker 1: whether or not they're able to make this. By the way,
Speaker 1: I didn't mention this their plan for the entire journey.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about that eight eight miles per
Speaker 1: hour top speed. It's going to take them five months
Speaker 1: to go all the way around the world, and that's
Speaker 1: in various legs of the journey, so it's going to
Speaker 1: be lots of stopping and starting, but five months total.
Speaker 1: So it's uh, you know, it's it's it's not something
Speaker 1: that's going to take place super fast, obviously, but I'm
Speaker 1: really curious to see if they're able to make it
Speaker 1: all the way around the world. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I love about this is that it's and it's
Speaker 1: really a pure engineering challenge, right. The whole thing was
Speaker 1: this idea of let's build a heavier than air aircraft
Speaker 1: only powered by solar energy. Um, the batteries are charged
Speaker 1: by solar energy. So that's how you can say that
Speaker 1: it's only powered by solar energy and be able to
Speaker 1: fly it all the way around the world. All right,
Speaker 1: that's our goal. How do we achieve that? And on
Speaker 1: a sleep. When they first started thinking about this, they
Speaker 1: started talking about it back in when they first started
Speaker 1: thinking about it, it was not something that could have
Speaker 1: been achieved just based upon the technology they had at
Speaker 1: their disposal. The team had to innovate and and invent
Speaker 1: things and tweak stuff in order for this to happen.
Speaker 1: And that's what I find so exciting because it's one
Speaker 1: of those projects where even if you think it's a
Speaker 1: ridiculous endeavor to fly around the world in a solar
Speaker 1: powered aircraft, the truth is the work that they're doing
Speaker 1: can inform other industries and other technologies that end up
Speaker 1: benefiting us in the long run. Yeah. Well, before I
Speaker 1: read about this particular story, I would have thought a
Speaker 1: solar powered aircraft was just impossible, that there's no way
Speaker 1: you can generate enough power to create the thrust you
Speaker 1: need to stay aloft and heavier than air aircraft. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you have a balloon or something. But right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it just blows my mind that they can
Speaker 1: do this at all. Not to mention the the extent
Speaker 1: to which there take king this technology, we should talk
Speaker 1: about how this is almost certainly not going to be
Speaker 1: the passenger plane of the future because all of the
Speaker 1: First of all, I think all the reasons that we
Speaker 1: gave of what they had to do in order to
Speaker 1: make this possible. I'm pretty sure that your average frequent
Speaker 1: flyer doesn't want to poop in their chair, right, that
Speaker 1: would be a big one. Well, and you can't get
Speaker 1: enough people on it, it doesn't go fast enough. You
Speaker 1: can't pressurize it, or at least that's what I assume.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about that. I didn't see anything
Speaker 1: about pressurization on about the solar impulse. If I'm wrong
Speaker 1: about that, that's fascinating. I would want to read more
Speaker 1: about that. How they achieve that using this lightweight approach.
Speaker 1: But well, even if you table that one, I mean,
Speaker 1: all the other concerns make this this is not going
Speaker 1: to replace the passenger jet. No, No, they What it
Speaker 1: could do is you could take a look at all
Speaker 1: the different considerations the tea made in order to make
Speaker 1: the aircraft as efficient as it possibly can, and some
Speaker 1: of those lessons you might be able to apply to
Speaker 1: aircraft designed in the future. Yeah, And I would think
Speaker 1: one thing to focus on, or at least for us
Speaker 1: to remember, is that the advances that come with this
Speaker 1: kind of aircraft that are really important to future aircraft
Speaker 1: that people might fly in are not necessarily like the
Speaker 1: solar panels or the solar implementation. It might be the
Speaker 1: ways that aircraft like this use clever tricks to become
Speaker 1: lighter and still stay have enough stability in the in
Speaker 1: the fuselage not to come apart, right right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: one of the things, you know, one of the big
Speaker 1: reasons why this is so important is that we didn't
Speaker 1: really address this, but air travel generates a lot of pollution.
Speaker 1: Right Your standard your standard jet, like your standard commercial jet,
Speaker 1: can create as much as point forward to point six
Speaker 1: five pounds of greenhouse gas per mile travel. That all
Speaker 1: depends on the destination and paradoxically, perhaps uh, the further
Speaker 1: you go, the less you're generating per mile. But the
Speaker 1: reason for that is because takeoff and landing are where
Speaker 1: you generate the most greenhouse gases because they require the
Speaker 1: most power. Yeah, there are people who talk about buying
Speaker 1: carbon offset credits when you take an air travel journey.
Speaker 1: That's not a bad idea, even though through through air
Speaker 1: travel it's not necessarily just carbon emissions. Is other greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas more prevalent in jet fuel exhaust? Ye, But I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a huge amount. Like you're talking, you know,
Speaker 1: point forward two point six five pounds of greenhouse gases.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you've weighed a gas recently,
Speaker 1: but it takes a lot for it to make a pound,
Speaker 1: So you're talking about a truly massive amount of greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases every time an aircraft is flying. Uh. And again,
Speaker 1: depending on the type of aircraft and how far it's going,
Speaker 1: that's what tells you how much average you are generating.
Speaker 1: So if we're able to take lessons from things like
Speaker 1: the solar impulse to air craft and incorporate them into
Speaker 1: future aircraft design so that aircraft are more efficient and
Speaker 1: using less fuel than we are, having a smaller negative
Speaker 1: impact on the environment overall. Yeah, And while as we said,
Speaker 1: there's probably not going to be a solely solar powered aircraft,
Speaker 1: there may be hybrid aircraft in the future. For standard commuters,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can see the possibility of using
Speaker 1: solar power for things other than the thrust, right, you
Speaker 1: can use solar panels to do things like help power
Speaker 1: some of the various systems aboard the aircraft, depending upon
Speaker 1: what kind of aircraft it is. I mean, you probably
Speaker 1: don't want all the avionics powered by solar power, but
Speaker 1: things like cabin lighting that kind of stuff could certainly
Speaker 1: be augmented through solar power either probably in a more
Speaker 1: uh analogous way to the way the solar impulse has batteries.
Speaker 1: You would probably use the solar power to charge batteries
Speaker 1: and then the systems withdraw electricity from the batteries not
Speaker 1: have a direct line solar panel to system because that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as useful in in you know, all the
Speaker 1: different situations that aircraft go in. The Other thing about
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is the aircraft tend to fly
Speaker 1: higher than your your regular cloud level commercial aircraft do,
Speaker 1: so they actually have better access to sunlight than say
Speaker 1: something that can't go that high. Um. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: we're seeing this technology being incorporated into unmanned aerial vehicles. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's already proposals for u A v s that could
Speaker 1: use solar panels and never have to land. They could
Speaker 1: just stay in the air perpelled, you know, until they
Speaker 1: needed some form of maintenance. So until something breaks, they're fine,
Speaker 1: in which case they'd probably just crash. Yeah, if there's
Speaker 1: enough of a warning where you know something's going to
Speaker 1: end up, or you just have you know, a set
Speaker 1: schedule or when things need to have regular maintenance, then
Speaker 1: you might be fine. But if you get a note saying, oh,
Speaker 1: propeller failed, and probably like, well lost that one. But
Speaker 1: it's in interesting because it could be used for all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, not just I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: people sit there and think of surveillance, but that's not
Speaker 1: the only use. You can use it for things like
Speaker 1: sending it into a dangerous area that's been hit by
Speaker 1: a disaster or other sort of calamity and get a
Speaker 1: really good idea of what's going on before you send
Speaker 1: any kind of first responders in, or in a example
Speaker 1: like the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, you want to be
Speaker 1: able to send in you know, robots and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff without having to put people in harm's way,
Speaker 1: because that's that's potentially a really dangerous situation. And having
Speaker 1: something that can maintain its position for a longer amount
Speaker 1: of time is more useful than something that just gets
Speaker 1: a snapshot and then that's all. You know. The battery
Speaker 1: life is only twenty minutes or forty minutes and then
Speaker 1: you have to fly it back. Uh, that's not as useful.
Speaker 1: Having something that can maintain its presence and keep an
Speaker 1: eye on developing situations is incredibly useful. So I think
Speaker 1: we're going to see that kind of technology more widely
Speaker 1: deployed over time as well. So I'm really really excited
Speaker 1: by this project. I mean, I love any kind of
Speaker 1: engineering challenge where it makes people think creatively about how
Speaker 1: to solve these problems. So maybe in the future will
Speaker 1: do an episode about some of the amazing DARPA challenges
Speaker 1: to like some of the ones that have incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: tasks that engineering teams have to figure out how do
Speaker 1: they achieve these these goals. I like the problems that
Speaker 1: are specifically like this, where you're trying to squeeze every
Speaker 1: last drop of efficiency out of a mechanical system. Like
Speaker 1: the same way I might not admire the way they
Speaker 1: drive in terms of safety reasons, but I like reading
Speaker 1: about the hyper milers, the people who try to get
Speaker 1: every possible efficiency advantage they can out of their car. Well,
Speaker 1: Joe in an in an offline conversation that we had
Speaker 1: earlier this week, we've already determined that Mrs Todd shortcut
Speaker 1: isn't interesting. King short story about you know, finding that
Speaker 1: most efficient, most efficient route, even if it costs you
Speaker 1: your sanity. Um, yeah, but no, I agree. I mean
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you always think, like,
Speaker 1: there are those moments where you think, all right, we've
Speaker 1: hit it, We've hit the pinnacle. There is no squeezing
Speaker 1: a single ounce of efficiency more out of this. Somebody
Speaker 1: smart can probably figure something out. Yeah, which is that's
Speaker 1: always fantastic. I mean because again, we all stand to benefit.
Speaker 1: It might not be immediate. It might not be that
Speaker 1: the next day you wake up and suddenly the world
Speaker 1: is a magical place. But it could mean that another
Speaker 1: five or ten years down the road, technology that we
Speaker 1: had not thought was possible is a mundane reality because
Speaker 1: of the things we learned from these engineering challenges. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So yeah, I think first I want to
Speaker 1: say thank you Joe for coming on the podcast visiting
Speaker 1: te stuff. Hell, well, you know, the hounters are all ours,
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy aid listening to it. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future topics I should cover, or any
Speaker 1: topics that require an update or three, let me know.
Speaker 1: You can reach out on Twitter the handle we uses
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart
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