Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I'm taking
Speaker 1: an aeroplane across the world to follow my heart. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host,
Speaker 1: Lauren fill Gobamb is not with us today. She's not
Speaker 1: feeling well. But today Jonathan and I are going to
Speaker 1: be talking about a subject that we've touched on in
Speaker 1: the past, and we're gonna come back and experience the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of an around the world journey of technology. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So back in April in two thousand fourteen, on April
Speaker 1: twenty three, to be precise, we published a podcast about
Speaker 1: solar powered vehicles, and we talked a lot about all
Speaker 1: sorts of different vehicles. Right, we talked about solar powered tanks.
Speaker 1: Don't think we got quite around to that, but we
Speaker 1: got the cars and boats and and even airplanes. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about all sorts of different types of vehicles,
Speaker 1: including are different ways of using solar power from using
Speaker 1: solar power just as the primary means of getting energy
Speaker 1: to move the car to using solar power as a
Speaker 1: recharging station for electric vehicles, sort of a backup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but one of the things we chatted about was this
Speaker 1: idea of a solar powered aircraft making a journey around
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, so you may have remember the name
Speaker 1: of this project. It was known as Solar Impulse back
Speaker 1: in the day. But we're sort of at the next level.
Speaker 1: It's one better. We've gone to Solar Impulse to write.
Speaker 1: The first Solar Impulse aircraft was impressive in its own right.
Speaker 1: We'll touch on that a little bit in this podcast,
Speaker 1: but it was the Solar Impulse too, that was the
Speaker 1: vehicle of choice to try and get around the world
Speaker 1: using only solar power as the source of energy. And
Speaker 1: they succeeded. They did. They've just seated in a full
Speaker 1: circumnavigation of the globe in a completely solar powered airplane. Now,
Speaker 1: if if you haven't been reading about this and and
Speaker 1: you're like, wait a minute, how long did it take?
Speaker 1: Did they ever land? It wasn't continuous, no, no, it
Speaker 1: was It was over the course of many, many, many
Speaker 1: segments and well well even kind of uh talk about
Speaker 1: just a few of those segments in particular, when something
Speaker 1: of real interest beyond I mean beyond just the fact
Speaker 1: that they did this incredible feat flying an airplane using
Speaker 1: solar power to generate electricity. Yeah, I guess I've read
Speaker 1: enough articles about Solar Impulse that I got kind of jaded.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, another Solar Impulse article. I need to
Speaker 1: remember to be astonished that this is a solar powered airplane.
Speaker 1: This is a heavier than air flying machine running entirely
Speaker 1: on photovolta excels. I still occasionally, when I'm on an airplane,
Speaker 1: We'll have that moment of this is incredible, and then
Speaker 1: I think, well, not only is this incredible, but someone
Speaker 1: has created a solar powered one of these. Typically I
Speaker 1: am on a jet, not an airplane airplane, so it's
Speaker 1: not exactly the same thing, but it is really interesting.
Speaker 1: And uh, we'll talk about kind of the motivations behind
Speaker 1: doing this in the first place, Well, what happens next
Speaker 1: now that this around the world journey has come to
Speaker 1: an end, and some other interesting tidbits about the project
Speaker 1: here and there. But first we should kind of talk
Speaker 1: about where did this idea even come from to start with?
Speaker 1: And and I actually went back and listen to that
Speaker 1: April fourteen episode because I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: when we did this episode, we didn't overlap too much, right,
Speaker 1: we didn't repeat ourselves, but really we were we were
Speaker 1: pretty uh, we were covering so many different topics in
Speaker 1: that episode that we didn't really dwell too much on
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse. So I feel okay about diving into the
Speaker 1: background a little bit in this one. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: two people who were really the the heart behind the project,
Speaker 1: the people who kind of came up with this notion
Speaker 1: and decided to um to really move forward with it,
Speaker 1: one as Pinky and the brain. It's odd that you
Speaker 1: put it that way, and I'll tell you why, because
Speaker 1: one of them is sort of the technical expert and
Speaker 1: the other one was sort of the adventurer type. But
Speaker 1: they both have taken turns flying the Solar Impulse to
Speaker 1: around the world. So the two people were Bertrand Picard
Speaker 1: and Andre Borschberg. Bertrand Picard was born in Lausanne in
Speaker 1: Switzerland and ninety eight, and on the Solar Impulse website
Speaker 1: if you wanted to read up on him, he is
Speaker 1: referred to as quote a medical doctor, explorer and lecturer
Speaker 1: and achieved the first ever NonStop round the world balloon flight.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't even know he was also a balloonist.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, he comes from a family of balloonists.
Speaker 1: That is not even a joke. That sounds like it
Speaker 1: would be a joke, like, yeah, my family's into ballooning.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely true in the case Mr Picard, So this
Speaker 1: is this is uh, this is not our brain. This
Speaker 1: is our pinky. Here not to say that he's not intelligent,
Speaker 1: but he's he's he's our pinky. He's not the technical
Speaker 1: he wasn't the technical advisor. He's a psychiatrist. So clearly
Speaker 1: is already very intelligent. His father was an undersea explorer,
Speaker 1: his grandfather was a balloonist. Other members of the Picard
Speaker 1: family include organic chemists and other explorers and balloonists. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you read about the family, you're thinking, this sounds
Speaker 1: like something out of a fantasy. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: can't be that many families of balloonists in the world,
Speaker 1: you would, Yeah, probably very few and far between. Bertrand's grandfather,
Speaker 1: August Picard, was the inspiration for a character in the
Speaker 1: Adventures of ten ten. Yeah, there's a professor. There's a
Speaker 1: professor in in the Adventures who's this brainy professor type,
Speaker 1: and he was modeled in part on Bertrand Picard's grandfather.
Speaker 1: Why that professor? He makes me think inc of Trotsky?
Speaker 1: Does he look like Trotsky? I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would describe him as Trotsky looking. I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's what I will say. The character is partly inspired
Speaker 1: by August Picard. I'm just trying to picture him. I
Speaker 1: might have the wrong character in my mind. There's so
Speaker 1: many intintin to write. But it's it's funny that, you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about, yeah, these they sound almost like cartoon characters,
Speaker 1: and then you realize, oh wait, one of them kind
Speaker 1: of inspired a cartoon character. Uh. And. Bertrand himself did
Speaker 1: a lot of flying as a young man. He flew
Speaker 1: in ultralight aircraft, in balloons and in hang gliders, and
Speaker 1: he completed his circumnavigation of the globe in a hot
Speaker 1: air balloon in n So he had already set a
Speaker 1: record before moving on to the Solar Impulse project. Like
Speaker 1: he had set the record as being part of a
Speaker 1: project to fly around the world in a hot air balloon.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to move up to something that was
Speaker 1: just slightly more high tech. Yeah, yeah, and and much
Speaker 1: more challenging in many ways from a technical standpoint, at
Speaker 1: least endurance wise. It's probably pretty rough either way. But
Speaker 1: the other member, of course, Andre Borschberg, he was a
Speaker 1: graduate of m I T. So he's in his training
Speaker 1: is in an engineering that's kind of where his education
Speaker 1: was focused. And he was born in Zurich, Switzerland in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two. And he's also like I mean, if
Speaker 1: you read up on him, he is an incredible advocate
Speaker 1: for a lot of social causes. Uh. He has dedicated
Speaker 1: a lot of time and resources to organizations like Rustos
Speaker 1: Decur which is or used to be known as Restaurants decor.
Speaker 1: This is actually a French organization that provides food to
Speaker 1: the needy. Um. He's also helped with social causes that
Speaker 1: benefit the sick. He's he's someone who is he's very
Speaker 1: outspoken about his desire to improve the lot of people
Speaker 1: around the world in as many ways as he can,
Speaker 1: and also has a lot of passion about the environment,
Speaker 1: as does Picard as well. Both of them share this
Speaker 1: and obviously that played a large part into the decision
Speaker 1: to try and make a solar powered airplane, which you'd
Speaker 1: think was kind of crazy. Um he was sort of
Speaker 1: the technical department head. So yeah, he's our he's our brain.
Speaker 1: So when did they get this crazy idea to try
Speaker 1: to make a solar powered airplane that they could take
Speaker 1: around the planet. Well, Picard kind of came up with
Speaker 1: it in two thousand two, and then he ended up
Speaker 1: talking with Boschberg and they decided to officially create a
Speaker 1: project called the Solar Impulse Project in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: So that was when they really started to say, well,
Speaker 1: what what's going to be necessary? What are we going
Speaker 1: to need in order to make this happen? And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of reasons that they were excited about
Speaker 1: doing this. Sorry, the thing that popped into my mind
Speaker 1: is parachute. Yeah right, uh yeah, we I didn't put
Speaker 1: it in our notes, but I will touch on something
Speaker 1: interesting because there are certain questions that immediately come up
Speaker 1: of mind when you start hearing about how long some
Speaker 1: of these flights were, and I will I will go
Speaker 1: into some of that when we get bad pans, yeah,
Speaker 1: or the fact that well no, let's not let's let's
Speaker 1: spoil it. I'll get there. Uh. So one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that they decided they wanted to do this, of course,
Speaker 1: was just the attractiveness of of setting another world record, right,
Speaker 1: creating a world's first. I mean, there could only be
Speaker 1: one world's first in any given category, and this was
Speaker 1: a way of doing that. So there's there's definitely that
Speaker 1: that sort of fame and explorer kind of side of
Speaker 1: the equation. Yeah, but this wouldn't be just a personal achievement.
Speaker 1: Like anytime you demonstrate what can be done with renewable
Speaker 1: energy in a way that surprises people, I think that
Speaker 1: helps knock down some of the barriers that exist in
Speaker 1: opposition to greater investment in renewable energy like solar. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's precisely what they were seeing too. They were saying like, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like a a giant PR project
Speaker 1: to promote solar energy in particular and renewable energy in general.
Speaker 1: And they also said, you know, by setting yourself a challenge,
Speaker 1: by giving yourself a definitive goal that we want to
Speaker 1: be able to achieve X, you then have to determine, well,
Speaker 1: what is necessary for you to get to X. It
Speaker 1: gives you something to work toward, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit easier than something that's open ended, like I want
Speaker 1: to improve solar cell technology. It's kind of like saying
Speaker 1: we're going to go to the Moon, as opposed to
Speaker 1: we're going to develop our space exploration capabilities. Yes, and
Speaker 1: by giving yourself that definitive goal, then you have created
Speaker 1: like a laserlike focus on what is necessary to achieve
Speaker 1: that goal. And the nice thing is making those advancements
Speaker 1: ends up creating benefits that go well beyond just that
Speaker 1: specific project, and we'll talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: towards the end of this episode. So from two thousand
Speaker 1: three to two thousand and ten, they were really working
Speaker 1: on designing the plane that could fly not just in
Speaker 1: the daytime with direct solar energy. So it's one thing
Speaker 1: to create an aircraft that has enough surface area for
Speaker 1: solar cells to provide the electricity necessary to turn electric
Speaker 1: or to power electric motors that then turn propellers. That's
Speaker 1: a challenge all on its own. Yeah, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about some of those design considerations in a bit, right.
Speaker 1: So the other part of that is how do you
Speaker 1: create one that can continue to fly when the sun
Speaker 1: goes down, because that that's been the big criticism. One
Speaker 1: of the big criticisms about solar power in general is that, well,
Speaker 1: you're dependent upon the sun. When the sun is not out,
Speaker 1: you're not generating electricity, and so you have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how do you solve that problem for any application that
Speaker 1: uses solar power and not I mean flying a plane
Speaker 1: across the Pacific Ocean. That's a pretty clear engineering challenge, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: electricity generation is a use it, lose it, or store
Speaker 1: it proposition. If you don't use it immediately or find
Speaker 1: a way to store it, it's not going to help you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's there, it's ephemeral, it's gone. Right. So
Speaker 1: they were able to create in two thousand ten the
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse one, the first of the aircraft, and uh
Speaker 1: demonstrate that it could actually fly through an entire day
Speaker 1: night cycle using onboard batteries to store electricity and then
Speaker 1: the batteries kick in once the solar cells are no
Speaker 1: longer able to pull the electricity necessary to power the motors.
Speaker 1: And um Picard flew that mission. It was a twenty
Speaker 1: six hour long flight, so a day and two hours
Speaker 1: of flying, and it was again a proof of concept.
Speaker 1: They knew at the time that the Solar Impulse one
Speaker 1: was not going to be the aircraft to go all
Speaker 1: the way around the world. But it was sort of
Speaker 1: the prototype that allowed them to test the technology and
Speaker 1: make sure that in fact, it would serve when they
Speaker 1: needed to get to UH to circumnavigate the globe. UH.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, the two men flew the Solar Impulse
Speaker 1: aircraft across the United States. UH. They took turns piloting
Speaker 1: the plane, and they traveled in several legs, so they
Speaker 1: would fly from one city to another city several hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, and then UH. Typically what they would do
Speaker 1: is actually switch off so that one person only one
Speaker 1: persons in the plane because weight is such a big consideration, right,
Speaker 1: So you got the pilot and that's it, and the
Speaker 1: other person would either take a commercial flight to get
Speaker 1: to the destination or drive to the destination. Really you
Speaker 1: could probably run and yeah, I mean if you were yeah,
Speaker 1: these these plane, this plane does not go very fast
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things. But then you would
Speaker 1: switch off, you know, you go to whatever the next
Speaker 1: city is, and then the pilots would trade. And this
Speaker 1: was not can This wasn't necessarily like one flight right
Speaker 1: after the next either, Right, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: downtime between flights because for one thing, they needed to
Speaker 1: make sure that the weather conditions were going to be acceptable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big thing, because this this plane's even though
Speaker 1: it's made out of some pretty interesting high tech material,
Speaker 1: ultimately you're still talking about a fairly delicate machine. And
Speaker 1: so you couldn't just and plus again, you need solar power.
Speaker 1: You need sunlight. So flying through like storms not a
Speaker 1: great idea with a solar powered aircraft. Usually when the
Speaker 1: captain says we can't take off in this weather, it
Speaker 1: is a safety consideration. In this case, you literally might
Speaker 1: not be able, you might not have the energy necessary
Speaker 1: to achieve light. Yeah. So, but that that happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, they were able to fly across the
Speaker 1: United States in this in this several legs kind of journey.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and fourteen they officially started to
Speaker 1: work on the second aircraft, Solar Impulse too, and they
Speaker 1: began to incorporate lessons that they learned from the first
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse aircraft. And this one would be the one
Speaker 1: that ends up flying around the world. That didn't start
Speaker 1: until two thousand and fifteen, and it went until July
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. So it's really took a year in
Speaker 1: several months. Yeah, it was a long process. This was
Speaker 1: not again, something that was done in one continuous trip. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the design considerations that
Speaker 1: come into play when you're talking about a solar powered aircraft. Well,
Speaker 1: the most obvious one is the difference in the energy
Speaker 1: that you're using to power the vehicle. So in a
Speaker 1: normal airplane you would use to circumnavigate the globe, you're
Speaker 1: going to be running on aviation fuel. There are different
Speaker 1: kinds of aviation fuel, but most often it's a kerosene
Speaker 1: based jet fuel these days, and that's going to be
Speaker 1: a high energy density, high quality fuel. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: important for flight because heavier than air flight is not
Speaker 1: just energy hungry, it's energy ravenous. Um. You have to
Speaker 1: generate enough thrust to overcome the gravity of the entire planet.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about it, and the planet is
Speaker 1: constantly trying to pull you down to it and give
Speaker 1: you a big earthy hug. Right. So it is rather earthy,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yes? I guess it could also be briny, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, depending upon what part of the Earth you
Speaker 1: are over. Actually, it's more briny than earthy when you
Speaker 1: really get down to surface area. But go on, quite true.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so these are design considerations you'd have to
Speaker 1: factor in. So to lift an airplane off the ground,
Speaker 1: you've got to generate that forward thrust to to drive
Speaker 1: the the air and the way you wanted to go
Speaker 1: across the aerodynamic design of the airplane under the wings. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you know there are considerations like the wing span.
Speaker 1: You can make the wings longer to generate more lift
Speaker 1: as you're trying to fly, but that also adds ways, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to you have to make that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much delicate math that goes into designing something
Speaker 1: like this where you think, all, right, what is the
Speaker 1: optimal arrangement of wingspan to weight where we're gonna have
Speaker 1: the large enough wingspan to generate the lift we need
Speaker 1: to get off the ground and and hopefully have the
Speaker 1: best wing span to uh improve the efficiency of flight
Speaker 1: so that you're not having to spend way too much
Speaker 1: energy to maintain flight. Like you want to have the
Speaker 1: minimum amount of energy you need to continue to be
Speaker 1: in the air, but you don't want you can't go
Speaker 1: you know, you can't make a wingspan of indefinite length,
Speaker 1: because eventually you get to a weight that it makes
Speaker 1: it impossible for you to achieve flight in the first place.
Speaker 1: Structural integrity exams and that also is a real issue, right,
Speaker 1: like if you've got too big, then the ends of
Speaker 1: the wings would be so heavy that your aircraft would
Speaker 1: break apart. Yeah. So this aircraft was powered by photovoltaic sils,
Speaker 1: as we said, so, yes, that's the kind that directly
Speaker 1: converts the sunlight into electricity, as opposed to other forms
Speaker 1: of solar such as solar thermal. Right, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not generating electricity through heat. It's changing it's when the
Speaker 1: photons excite electrons, and that's what you get with your electricity.
Speaker 1: And it's just the big black mirrors that you see yep, yep,
Speaker 1: the kind that you would see on typically like if
Speaker 1: if if your neighbors, or if you have ever installed
Speaker 1: solar panels on the top of a house, that's typically
Speaker 1: the kind that we're talking about, right. So it's got
Speaker 1: a lot of those. It's got seventeen thousand two photovoltaic
Speaker 1: cells that are across the top of the airplane for
Speaker 1: a maximum exposure. Yeah, and and those cells provide electricity
Speaker 1: to four thirteen point five kilowatton motors, and those motors
Speaker 1: each turn. Each motor turns a propeller and also provides
Speaker 1: charge to onboard batteries. So if you look at the
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse too, and you see this this plane with
Speaker 1: really wide wings, you'll see that there are the four
Speaker 1: propellers in these little like rectangular casings. Those casings hold
Speaker 1: not just the propeller and the electric motor, but also
Speaker 1: the battery, the four big batteries that are on board
Speaker 1: this plane. So that's where they're balanced there along the wings,
Speaker 1: so that the weight is distributed just the right way,
Speaker 1: and that the propellers are positioned in such a way
Speaker 1: to provide the optimal thrust for the air craft. Now,
Speaker 1: those batteries have to be an interesting design consideration because
Speaker 1: usually batteries are heavy. Yeah, these batteries are are They
Speaker 1: make up twenty of the aircraft's overall weight. More than
Speaker 1: actually it's more more than a quarter of the weight
Speaker 1: of the aircraft goes to those four batteries that are
Speaker 1: in that the wings of the Solar Impulse to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's get into the design here. So, yeah, this
Speaker 1: thing if you've seen a picture of it, and if
Speaker 1: you haven't, you should go look it up. There are
Speaker 1: some great photo galleries online and Solar Impulse, either at
Speaker 1: stations around the world or in flight. It's cool looking.
Speaker 1: It's got a massive wingspan, gigantic. Yeah, it's huge, a
Speaker 1: wingspan of seventy two ms. And that is compared for comparison.
Speaker 1: I looked up the wingspan of a Bowing seven eight,
Speaker 1: which is sixty eight point four meters, So this is
Speaker 1: a one passenger aircraft that has a wider wingspan than
Speaker 1: a Bowing seven Right. And uh, in case you're not
Speaker 1: up on the metrics, for one thing, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to switch it to yards, it's almost seventy nine yards wide,
Speaker 1: which means that it's getting pretty close to being as
Speaker 1: wide as a football field is long. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know it would it would if you were to put
Speaker 1: it in the center line of a football field, it
Speaker 1: would span a very good portion, pretty much to the
Speaker 1: two ten yard lines. Yeah, it's it's pretty impressive. It's
Speaker 1: about two thirty six feet if you prefer feet to yards.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so huge wingspan, but on, but compare that
Speaker 1: to the fact that the entire airplane. According to those
Speaker 1: public facing material Solar Impulse put out, it weighs two
Speaker 1: point three tons. Okay, so that's a lot if you're
Speaker 1: trying to like lift it with your arms. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that is not a lot for an aircraft. Compare that
Speaker 1: again to a Boeing seven actually, the weight of which
Speaker 1: I couldn't find from Boeing itself. I'm I guess maybe
Speaker 1: we shouldn't consider it surprising that they don't want to
Speaker 1: share publicly the weight of their aircraft. But I did
Speaker 1: find an online aviation encyclopedia that claimed that the empty
Speaker 1: weight of a Boeing seven forty seven is about four
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy thousand pounds, which works out to two Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's hefty, But think about the comparison there. So
Speaker 1: the Solar Impulse has about a hundred and five percent
Speaker 1: of a seven forty seven swing span and less than
Speaker 1: one percent of its empty weight. Right, So you already
Speaker 1: are seeing that they had to make some pretty uh
Speaker 1: dramatic considerations in order to make this a viable aircraft.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, you could say, well, how do they get
Speaker 1: the weight so low? And part of it was the
Speaker 1: use of lightweight materials like various carbon fiber composites that
Speaker 1: are lighter in weight than stuff like steel and aluminum.
Speaker 1: But that's not enough. They also decided, hey, is this
Speaker 1: particular system necessary for the plane to get up and
Speaker 1: stay up in the air, And if it isn't, we're
Speaker 1: getting rid of it. And that's exactly what they did
Speaker 1: when they started designing the Solar Impulse. They said, anything
Speaker 1: that's not specifically necessary to get into the air or
Speaker 1: stay in the air, we're not gonna put it on
Speaker 1: the plane. So do they have like the pilots weighing
Speaker 1: their breakfast that they before they take off. I'm certain
Speaker 1: that they had very specific like, uh, allotments for what
Speaker 1: food could be brought onto the plane because you have
Speaker 1: to eat. Some of these flights took more than a
Speaker 1: hundred hours uh and that's multiple days obviously. So one
Speaker 1: of the other things they would do is say, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it would it would be pretty heavy if
Speaker 1: we had a system to pressurize the cockpit, so let's
Speaker 1: not do that. So the cockpit was unpressurized, also unheeded, unheeded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was no heating, rare conditioning in in that cockpit. Yep.
Speaker 1: You you were pretty much gonna need to make sure
Speaker 1: you were bundled up or able to cool off um
Speaker 1: or just endure it for the length of the flight.
Speaker 1: And it also meant that they had to have um now,
Speaker 1: like they had to carry like a portable oxygen tank
Speaker 1: to occasionally take a good whiff because they're flying it.
Speaker 1: They're flying a decent altitudes like twenty nine feet. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty high up there. So they were definitely,
Speaker 1: uh being adventurous in this approach. So anyway, these are
Speaker 1: these considerations weren't made lightly. It wasn't like they were
Speaker 1: just being cavalier about it. They were making very tough
Speaker 1: calls on all right, what what can we expect to
Speaker 1: do without putting our lives at risk unnecessarily? Uh, and
Speaker 1: what can we what do we absolutely have to have
Speaker 1: in order for this to be a successful project and
Speaker 1: not a terrible, terrible note in history. And that's a
Speaker 1: that's a tough call because these both I mean, clearly
Speaker 1: Picard had a history of adventure in his past, and
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you might make a call that other
Speaker 1: people would say, well that just seems like that's too
Speaker 1: far beyond my threshold for risk. Right. But this meant
Speaker 1: that they got a plane that was at that two
Speaker 1: point three tons that wasn't wasn't as nearly as heavy
Speaker 1: as other aircraft. And that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it was a success, because they were able to keep
Speaker 1: that weight down, which allowed the electric motors to provide
Speaker 1: enough thrust to keep the plane going. So it kind
Speaker 1: of brings us over to the fact that we know
Speaker 1: we mentioned before the flying by night, like how do
Speaker 1: you fly by night? Right? If you've got to fly
Speaker 1: for four days straight in order to go across an
Speaker 1: ocean or something like that, and if you can't, you
Speaker 1: can't just run on what's available at the moment, right,
Speaker 1: And if you're determined, if you're absolutely determined that solar
Speaker 1: power is going to be the source of your energy
Speaker 1: and you're not going to fudge by having a like
Speaker 1: a fuel based motor, backup motors and yes, some sort
Speaker 1: of engine as well as the motors, then you've got
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, how are we going to
Speaker 1: to continue to fly at in you know, the hours
Speaker 1: of darkness. And then of course comes down to those
Speaker 1: batteries we talked about. They have four high voltage batteries
Speaker 1: aboard the solar impulse too, and the photovo take cells
Speaker 1: can actually generate enough electricity to both power the electric
Speaker 1: motors and recharge the batteries simultaneously, which was absolutely necessary
Speaker 1: on the very long flights, right because you know, you
Speaker 1: would get to a point where, sure, you might be
Speaker 1: able to make it through one night, but if you're
Speaker 1: not able to recharge that battery during the next day
Speaker 1: and then you go into a second night, you run
Speaker 1: into some serious problems. So each battery is a seventy
Speaker 1: leader lithium polymer battery with an energy density of two
Speaker 1: hundred sixty one hours per kilogram, and their total mass
Speaker 1: is six hundred already three kilograms, And like I said,
Speaker 1: that means it's more than a quarter of the total
Speaker 1: weight of the aircraft. So, uh, that to me is
Speaker 1: incredible that the batteries themselves make up more than a
Speaker 1: fourth of the of the weight of the entire vehicle,
Speaker 1: especially when you think of a vehicle that has a
Speaker 1: wingspan that that huge. Uh. They could store a maximum
Speaker 1: capacity of thirty eight point five kill what hours of
Speaker 1: energy of electricity, and they did did have a second battery,
Speaker 1: but that battery wasn't like a backup system or anything.
Speaker 1: That second battery was a low voltage type of battery
Speaker 1: that specifically provided electricity to the cockpit systems, so you
Speaker 1: would have your navigation tools and things like that continued
Speaker 1: to be powered through that battery, as opposed to one
Speaker 1: of the ones that was in charge of making sure
Speaker 1: the propellers didn't stop moving. Um And if you look
Speaker 1: again at the picture, you'll see the little that they
Speaker 1: called him gondolas, the the kind of rectangular cubic sort
Speaker 1: of containers that the propellers extend out of. They are
Speaker 1: pretty big. There was a great picture in one of
Speaker 1: the one of the pages on the Solar Impulse page
Speaker 1: that showed a person, an engineer, laying inside a gondola,
Speaker 1: clearly working inside of it on connections, and so all
Speaker 1: you see are the person's legs and feet sticking out
Speaker 1: from the end of it. So it was they're big,
Speaker 1: they're not tiny things, and the batteries take up a
Speaker 1: good amount of space in there. And they actually partnered
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of different companies to create this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just Solar Impulse too. So in this way,
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse is a lot like organizations like NASA where
Speaker 1: they partner with other companies to provide materials or entire systems,
Speaker 1: depending upon what it is you're talking with. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: So this was not just two guys who went into
Speaker 1: a backyard and built a solar powered airplane. One of
Speaker 1: the companies they worked with quite a bit was sulv
Speaker 1: a UM, they Solve. They did a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different work on the Solar Impulse too, but they, for
Speaker 1: one thing, provided the material, the lightweight, sturdy material, mostly
Speaker 1: carbon fiber and carbon fiber fiber composites to create the
Speaker 1: actual body of the airplane. They also provided a protective
Speaker 1: resin to coat the solar cell so it was transparent,
Speaker 1: but also provided protection in the event of the aircraft
Speaker 1: encountering bad weather or you know, any sort of dust
Speaker 1: or anything like that that it may have to move
Speaker 1: through from one region to another. You know, you're going
Speaker 1: around the entire world. That's a lot of different environments
Speaker 1: you're going to pass through. Uh. And the solar cells
Speaker 1: were provided by a company called SunPower, and they were
Speaker 1: really high efficiency all things considered. They had an efficiency
Speaker 1: of twenty two point seven percent now compared to consumer
Speaker 1: solar cells which tend to be around twelve to. Maybe
Speaker 1: you might find some as high as twenty, but that
Speaker 1: would really be super high end on the consumer side,
Speaker 1: two seven percent is pretty incredible. Now. That efficiency means
Speaker 1: that twenty two point seven percent of the energy hitting
Speaker 1: that solar cell can be converted into useful electricity. The
Speaker 1: rest of it is bouncing off or being absorbed as heat,
Speaker 1: just sort of the nature of solar. Yeah, it's we're
Speaker 1: never going to develop a solar cell that will be
Speaker 1: a percent efficient. It is physically impossible. The I think
Speaker 1: the hypothetical limit from like a quantum uh level is
Speaker 1: somewhere between I want to say, I want to say
Speaker 1: is the absolute limit, but it's closer to like six
Speaker 1: for more realistic limits, and that's if everything were perfect,
Speaker 1: which will never do anyway. Um So getting to this
Speaker 1: twenty seven is actually pretty incredible, even though it sounds
Speaker 1: low when you're thinking about percentages and you think twenty
Speaker 1: two point seven doesn't sound that impressive, but trust me,
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. Then there were other companies. There was
Speaker 1: a company called Omega that provided lightweight l e ed
Speaker 1: s for the lighting for the plane, obviously very important
Speaker 1: when it's coming in for a landing, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and there were others as well, So this was a
Speaker 1: group effort. Now let's kind of talk about the actual
Speaker 1: trip around the world. Well, yeah, so, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: the Solar Impulse is a one seater. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: don't get to have a companion on this journey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was the same as what I was talking
Speaker 1: about with the USA trip, where the pilots would switch
Speaker 1: off between legs, but it would mean that one person
Speaker 1: would take a normal flight over to whatever the destination
Speaker 1: was and await the arrival of the the other pilot,
Speaker 1: and then they would switch out and do that all
Speaker 1: the way around the world with some pretty significant delays
Speaker 1: in between some of those legs. That's got to create
Speaker 1: a very weird looking like commercial flight history. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be one point in particular where we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some kind of an unfortunate but sort of funny, uh,
Speaker 1: set of circumstances that involves the more mundane aspects of travel. Well,
Speaker 1: so the two pilots were the same two pilots we
Speaker 1: talked about before. It's the same two guys behind Solar again, right. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, the flight was not continuous that
Speaker 1: there were seventeen different stages of the flight that they
Speaker 1: spent a total of over five hundred hours in the
Speaker 1: air growing around the world, but layovers included. It took,
Speaker 1: as we said, over a year to complete the entire circumnavigation. Right,
Speaker 1: so five hours is around the twenty one days. So
Speaker 1: you think about your like, think about for for three
Speaker 1: quarters of the month of February you are flying. Yeah, not,
Speaker 1: I mean for for for twenty four hours a day
Speaker 1: for three weeks you're flying. It's a lot of flying.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I mean, you would
Speaker 1: hit executive platinum like no time at all, but that
Speaker 1: would be brutal. But you're not right in first class,
Speaker 1: are you? No? No, this isn't even steerage if there
Speaker 1: were such a thing for aircraft. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the different legs of the flight because some of them,
Speaker 1: some of them will just gloss over pretty quick. But
Speaker 1: a couple of them had some interesting stories. We came
Speaker 1: a price about them. So they started and finished in
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and uh so
Speaker 1: the first leg of the trip was Abu Dhabi too, Muscat, Oman, right,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to give you guys sort of a comparison,
Speaker 1: Like we talked about five hours in the air, twenty
Speaker 1: one day's total, and it took more than a year
Speaker 1: for the whole thing to complete. But it's still kind
Speaker 1: of hard to put into your head, like how fast
Speaker 1: is this thing traveling? The answer is not very uh,
Speaker 1: And so I thought one way to do that would
Speaker 1: be to take this first egg from Abu Dhabi to
Speaker 1: Mascott and to look at the amount of time it
Speaker 1: would take on a commercial flight versus the time it
Speaker 1: took the Solar Impulse to to complete that trip. So
Speaker 1: if you were to book a commercial flight on Oman Air,
Speaker 1: that particular trip would take about an hour and fifteen
Speaker 1: or an hour and twenty minutes. And keep in mind,
Speaker 1: you know, that includes all that whole taxiing business, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff when you're not actually in the air. So
Speaker 1: somewhere around a little hour and twenty minutes to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point b. Uh the trip, the
Speaker 1: distance that the Solar Impulse to travel, which by the way,
Speaker 1: is probably not the exact same flight path that you
Speaker 1: would see in the commercial flights, was about four eight
Speaker 1: miles or seven seventy two kilometers and it took them
Speaker 1: to Uh, it took the solar Impulse to rather thirteen
Speaker 1: hours one minute to make the trip. So thirteen hours
Speaker 1: and a minute to go the same distance that a
Speaker 1: commercial flight would take in an hour and twitter. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that it's incredible. A thirteen hour You know. I've been
Speaker 1: on some flights where there's been delays, but I've never
Speaker 1: had an hour and twenty minute flights stretching to a
Speaker 1: thirteen hour one minute flight. Oh man, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't like sitting on an airplane for a long period
Speaker 1: of time. Um, I mean not. It is a wonderful
Speaker 1: modern luxury to be able to travel, yes, all around
Speaker 1: the world, so I shouldn't complain about it. But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not so made as to enjoy long periods of
Speaker 1: sitting still without being able to get get up and
Speaker 1: go do something else. Yeah, especially not being able to
Speaker 1: do it without being a complete inconvenience to everyone around you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it tends to be the way it is on flights. Also,
Speaker 1: one thing that you do have an advantage of over
Speaker 1: the pilots of the solar impulse too. This is a
Speaker 1: good time to talk about it because thirteen hours. That's
Speaker 1: a long time to go, right. If you are on
Speaker 1: a long flight, elaboratory you've got elaboratory you can walk to,
Speaker 1: but you better not try to smoke in there or
Speaker 1: disabled the smoke detectors. You are in for a for
Speaker 1: a weapon that you couldn't believe, or at least a
Speaker 1: finger wag. Right, it's a Delta Airlines State Safety video choke.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so on the celar impulse to of course,
Speaker 1: there's single seater. There's no lavatory there. The chair, the
Speaker 1: pilot's seat, served multiple purposes. This was exactly a reaction
Speaker 1: in the April fourteen episode. I said, oh yeah, when
Speaker 1: I got to this part you and Lawrence, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it acted as the pilot seat, a cot for sleeping in,
Speaker 1: and a toilet. Yeah, which, by the way, I have
Speaker 1: a chair at home that serves those purposes too. It
Speaker 1: wasn't meant to that. I figured, with a little determination,
Speaker 1: you can turn any chair into that kind of thing. Wait,
Speaker 1: so does it stretch out to become a cot or
Speaker 1: do you just sleep sitting on That is a question
Speaker 1: I do not. I think I think it may have
Speaker 1: reclined a little bit, because I would think just for
Speaker 1: some kind of strange psychological reasons. You need to be
Speaker 1: in a slightly different position for sleeping than the position
Speaker 1: you're in for pooping and and possibly also for piloting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's attractive to think about, right, the idea
Speaker 1: that you've got, you know, you know, but but you
Speaker 1: you couldn't have a lot of other stuff there because
Speaker 1: it would add weight. So it was it became a
Speaker 1: matter of necessity. Uh, not the most glamorous of things
Speaker 1: to think about, all right. So the first trip was
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi to Oman, and next they went Ohman to
Speaker 1: uh Metabod, India. And here's a funny story. This is
Speaker 1: what I was talking about with the mundane. So Picard
Speaker 1: lands in India and when he gets there, there's this
Speaker 1: big welcoming ceremony and there are a bunch of local
Speaker 1: authorities there, they are members of the media there, they
Speaker 1: all want to have their picture tag and they all
Speaker 1: are doing speeches. They're talking to him, they're welcoming, welcoming him.
Speaker 1: He's getting this incredible experience. And it went on for
Speaker 1: so long that Picard was not actually able to go
Speaker 1: and get his passport stamped to move to to legally
Speaker 1: enter the country. They closed down the office the essentially
Speaker 1: the checkpoint where he could get his passport stamped, and
Speaker 1: so he was stuck. It was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: being stuck in an airport. He could not legally go
Speaker 1: anywhere else. And so uh he was delayed, and that
Speaker 1: meant that he was not going to be able to
Speaker 1: catch another flight to go further into India and meet
Speaker 1: up with uh the other pilot Borshberg in order to
Speaker 1: do another switch, and that was to Varanasi, India, And
Speaker 1: so it became clear like he it was gonna make
Speaker 1: a delay, and this was a big deal because a
Speaker 1: delay in one place means delays all the way down
Speaker 1: the line. For It's not like they could pick up
Speaker 1: speed and make up for lost time. This plane was
Speaker 1: not built for that. So it was it was legitimately
Speaker 1: a concern to them that they were going to have
Speaker 1: this delay, and there was not really anything they could
Speaker 1: do about it. They were kind of stuck in this
Speaker 1: this legal bureaucratic mess. It seems almost a metaphor for
Speaker 1: those times when a bureaucratic limbo interferes with the progress
Speaker 1: of technological achievements. Yeah, exactly. It's a great little way
Speaker 1: to point at it. I mean you part of you,
Speaker 1: you're like you understand where the issue is it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you've gotta you gotta follow the protocol. But
Speaker 1: couldn't we have maybe had him get his passport stamped
Speaker 1: first and then have the big welcoming ceremony. Clearly no,
Speaker 1: so they were able to continue obviously. So the next
Speaker 1: leg was to Varanasi, India, and then there was a
Speaker 1: switch then um Mandalay in Myanmar, and then Cheong King
Speaker 1: or Chong Hing I should say, in China, uh non Jing, China, Nagoya, Japan,
Speaker 1: and then we hit the longest leg of their journey
Speaker 1: around the world. Because what's after Japan. Well, if you're
Speaker 1: playing risk, you might go to come chat up across
Speaker 1: through Alaska. But they were crossing the Pacific Ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Pacific, by the way, is pretty big. It's a
Speaker 1: big ocean. So they were going from a Nagoya, Japan
Speaker 1: to Hawaii and this was the the longest expanse that
Speaker 1: they were going to have to travel in this solar
Speaker 1: powered aircraft. Barshberg was the one who piloted this leg,
Speaker 1: so I guess he got the short straw and Um
Speaker 1: This was a record breaking flight. It spanned five thousand,
Speaker 1: five miles or eight thousand, nine hundred twenty four kilometers.
Speaker 1: Their maximum altitude was around twenty eight thousand, three hundred
Speaker 1: feet or eight thousand, six hundred thirty four meters, so
Speaker 1: pretty high up there. And the whole thing took them
Speaker 1: four days, twenty one hours, and fifty two minutes to
Speaker 1: fly to Hawaii. So they just shying five days flying. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of poop napp And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's an endurance test, right, and that that also shows
Speaker 1: you have to have a lot of of confidence in
Speaker 1: your aircraft's ability to stay on course. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they developed strategies for how long they should
Speaker 1: sleep at a time and then wake up probably regular intervals,
Speaker 1: to make certain that they're still on course and haven't drifted,
Speaker 1: or that the weather conditions hadn't changed in a way
Speaker 1: that was going to put them at risk. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of considerations you have to make when you're
Speaker 1: in that position. It is almost unthinkable to me, like
Speaker 1: how complicated that had to be. I have trouble sleeping
Speaker 1: on a regular passenger airliner. Yeah, yeah, I understand entirely,
Speaker 1: and once they once they landed in Hawaii, they needed repairs.
Speaker 1: And this is also terrifying. They had to repair because
Speaker 1: the batteries had sustained dammit, they had been overheating. And
Speaker 1: so you know, anytime you're talking about a chemical battery,
Speaker 1: temperature can play a big role in how that battery performs.
Speaker 1: If you cool a battery down too much, then it
Speaker 1: is very sluggish. It's not going to generate electricity at
Speaker 1: the rate that you would normally expect. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: a problem. But if it overheats, then the chemical reactions
Speaker 1: can start going, uh getting too fast. You end up
Speaker 1: losing capacity, so that even once the battery cools down,
Speaker 1: you can never charge it as fully as you did before.
Speaker 1: So then's a good reason not to leave your laptop
Speaker 1: in a hot car. Yeah yeah, because then you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird because charge the other day lasted
Speaker 1: me like six hours and now it's like two. Uh So,
Speaker 1: they obviously had to do repairs and replacement of a
Speaker 1: lot of of parts to make sure that they would
Speaker 1: be safe for the next leg. Because while the next
Speaker 1: leg was as long, you're still talking about multiple days
Speaker 1: over the Pacific Ocean, right, so they get to Hawaii,
Speaker 1: they have to do repairs. That slows them down a
Speaker 1: little bit. Then their next leg was from Hawaii to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. This was a two thousand, five thirty nine
Speaker 1: mile or four thousand eighty six kilometer journey, which took
Speaker 1: two days, fourteen hours, and twenty nine minutes to make
Speaker 1: the trip, so not nearly as long, but still two
Speaker 1: days of flying two and a half more than two
Speaker 1: and a half. From San Francisco, they flew to Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: then to Tulsa, Oklahoma, then to Dayton, Ohio, and this
Speaker 1: is when they hit another snag. So one of the
Speaker 1: things they had for this project was they had a
Speaker 1: portable hangar, like an airplane hangar to store the airplane
Speaker 1: when it wasn't in flight or when there wasn't a
Speaker 1: hangar that they could use in the location they had
Speaker 1: gone to. And this portable hangar was kind of an
Speaker 1: inflatable um UH building, So they inflated it had a
Speaker 1: semi rigid structure and they could park the airplane in there.
Speaker 1: In Dayton, Ohio, there was some problem where the hangar
Speaker 1: started to deflate. Yeah, it was collapsing in on its
Speaker 1: plane with the plane inside it. So you've got this
Speaker 1: plane with this massive wingspan and this lightweight strong material.
Speaker 1: But it is very lightweight material. If you were to
Speaker 1: put too much weight on the end of those wings
Speaker 1: and they could snap or at least weaken the structure,
Speaker 1: which obviously would be devastating if that were to fail
Speaker 1: in the middle of a flight. So this was a
Speaker 1: moment of high anxiety and stress for the entire team.
Speaker 1: They didn't know at first if the plane had sustained
Speaker 1: any damage, and so they had to take some time
Speaker 1: to make sure that, in fact it was still in
Speaker 1: good working order. Fortunately it was, but it did end
Speaker 1: up causing a bit of a delay and and set
Speaker 1: them back a little further than what they had intended. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their next trip was from Ohio to le High Valley, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which is near Allentown. I've never heard of that before.
Speaker 1: You never heard of Allentown or le High Valley. As
Speaker 1: I say, if you've never heard of Allentown, I got
Speaker 1: a Billy Joel song you Gotta Here, which is really depressing,
Speaker 1: but it's a song about Allentown, Pennsylvania. From there, they
Speaker 1: took off and landed in New York and then we
Speaker 1: hit the next pretty long leg. So they had already
Speaker 1: gone across the Pacific. That was the that was always
Speaker 1: going to be the longest of their trips. But now
Speaker 1: they had another long stretch over ocean, this time the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean, and they were flying from New York across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic to Seville, Spain. Now this took a lot
Speaker 1: less time than crossing the Pacific. The Atlantic is not
Speaker 1: as wide, or at least the distance between North America
Speaker 1: and Europe is not as great. But they didn't have
Speaker 1: a stop along the way here. Now this was straight
Speaker 1: flight from New York to Saville. So this was the
Speaker 1: second longest leg. The third longest would have been the
Speaker 1: second part of the Pacific trip. The first was Japan
Speaker 1: to Hawaii. This would be the second one. The third
Speaker 1: was Hawaii to San Francisco. So this trip lasted two days,
Speaker 1: twenty three hours and eight minutes, so almost three days,
Speaker 1: and the distance traveled was four thousand, two hundred four
Speaker 1: miles or about six thousand, seven hundred sixty kilometers uh.
Speaker 1: From Seville, Spain, they flew to Cairo, Egypt, and then
Speaker 1: from Cairo back to Abu Dhabi, where they started and
Speaker 1: that would conclude this globe trotting trip and um. But
Speaker 1: they were facing challenges right up to the very end.
Speaker 1: I read in the Solar Impulse blog where they were
Speaker 1: talking about the very last leg of the journey, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of concerns. They were related to both,
Speaker 1: you know, the politics and the climate of of trying
Speaker 1: to cross the Middle Eastern terrain. So they wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: crossing the Middle East is not as easy as you
Speaker 1: may imagine, which I already think of as not being easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a number of factors such as no fly zones, heat,
Speaker 1: thermal's talking about the thermal patterns right, like like updrafts
Speaker 1: of air from where, you know, the same sort of
Speaker 1: things that that large birds of prey would use to
Speaker 1: remain aloft. Yeah, take off and landing conditions and wind,
Speaker 1: making this flight the most complex we have yet encountered.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, like just when you start looking at
Speaker 1: the different countries that they had to either pass over
Speaker 1: or stop end, it must have been a real effort
Speaker 1: to get the kind of permissions necessary to make this journey.
Speaker 1: I mean, just even the beyond the technical challenges, just
Speaker 1: the political negotiation you would have to do yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't even know. I mean, I can't. Is it difficult
Speaker 1: to land a plane in Myanmar? I do, I don't know,
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that when you're passing through some of
Speaker 1: the countries they were talking about, there's you want to
Speaker 1: be real specific with your permission request to enter their airspace.
Speaker 1: And I guess it probably doesn't hurt that they're both Swiss.
Speaker 1: That probably helps a little bit. But uh, and also
Speaker 1: you know that this was a a an endeavor to
Speaker 1: push solar power, and you know it's an environmental and
Speaker 1: scientific value to the project, which I think helps a
Speaker 1: lot of countries say yeah, we're all right with that.
Speaker 1: But still, I mean, I wouldn't want to be the
Speaker 1: person who's, hey, we hired you. Your job is to
Speaker 1: get permission for us to enter the airspace of all
Speaker 1: of these countries, like and keep in mind that some
Speaker 1: of them don't like the countries. You have already been
Speaker 1: in peace on Earth and goodwill towards he who sits
Speaker 1: in the poop Cut. Poop Cut that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the name of my band, poop Cut. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the stage, poop Cut. So the total journey
Speaker 1: as we mentioned. Began in March, finished in July on July, so,
Speaker 1: uh took a long time. It was more than twenty
Speaker 1: six thousand, seven hundred miles or forty three thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: in total. That's a long journey. It's a very long journey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you actually I like that you have a note
Speaker 1: here about what the average flight speed was on that
Speaker 1: final leg of the dree You think that you're thinking
Speaker 1: trying to cross the finish line right there, they're almost there,
Speaker 1: so they gotta be putting it a pedal to the metal.
Speaker 1: How fast were they going? It's thirty four point five
Speaker 1: miles per hour or fifty five point four kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: and that you wouldn't think that you could stay up
Speaker 1: in the air at that speed. Right. Well, it's those
Speaker 1: huge wings, you know, it's being lights having the design
Speaker 1: giant wingspan and uh man, that's uh that's impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh you might wonder, well what comes next? I mean,
Speaker 1: we now that they've completed this this thing, they've been
Speaker 1: working on it for more than a decade, Well what
Speaker 1: are they gonna do now? Bertram Picard has said, quote
Speaker 1: I'm sure that within ten years we'll see electric airplanes
Speaker 1: transporting fifty passengers on short to medium hall flights. That
Speaker 1: that sounds great to me, but I somehow have a
Speaker 1: hard time believing that that will be the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be awesome if it was. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you could. You would have to design
Speaker 1: it so that the speed of travel is much greater
Speaker 1: to to make it worthwhile worth the time, Like, why
Speaker 1: why is this commercially appealing? Yeah, because if you could
Speaker 1: drive to the location faster or as fast as the
Speaker 1: process of getting on a plane and flying, then why
Speaker 1: would you bother with the flying part? Right? I guess
Speaker 1: you could say for crossing water or something, it might
Speaker 1: be an alternative to taking a boat. Um, so that's possibility.
Speaker 1: And man, you could also argue that if you were
Speaker 1: to design like a luxury version of this, it could
Speaker 1: become kind of, uh, status sort of thing. But that's
Speaker 1: not exactly commercial demand. That's talking about Hey, one per centers,
Speaker 1: how would you like to very slowly pass over the
Speaker 1: land that you rule with iron fist? You know? I
Speaker 1: would also think that fifty passengers, Okay, that's adding a
Speaker 1: lot of weight. Commercial passengers are probably gonna want lavatories,
Speaker 1: and yeah, They're probably are not so happy with the
Speaker 1: poop cut the drink carts and stuff like that. They
Speaker 1: will probably want heating and air conditioning. Um. So, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a little hard to imagine. But one
Speaker 1: thing that I'm not trying to discourage it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it would be great if somebody could figure
Speaker 1: out a way to make this work commercially. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to put the pieces together in my head. It's
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine it being practical. I I
Speaker 1: think it would also be awesome if we could make
Speaker 1: it practical, because getting off a reliance for fuel would
Speaker 1: be great. I mean, we've talked about the environmental impact
Speaker 1: of stuff like air flight and other shows. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to see it too. I don't know
Speaker 1: how practical it is, but one thing that is practical
Speaker 1: again is the fact that by making this engineering challenge
Speaker 1: and by completing it, they've shown what solar power is
Speaker 1: capable of doing, and with any luck, they've inspired more
Speaker 1: people to really take a serious look at solar power
Speaker 1: as a way of supplementing or perhaps supplying all of
Speaker 1: their electrical power. And that would be amazing. Um. And
Speaker 1: we we've talked about that in other shows as well,
Speaker 1: so ultimately, you know, again it was get your names
Speaker 1: in the history books and also let's promote the heck
Speaker 1: out of solar energy and renewable energy. And I think
Speaker 1: they succeeded on both counts, so really impressive, and it
Speaker 1: was interesting to look at another kind of engineering challenge. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in like all the DARPA episodes too,
Speaker 1: it's very similar. So this was pretty cool. I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we had a chance to follow up on it
Speaker 1: because when we recorded this back in two fourteen, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if it was ever going to actually happen.
Speaker 1: There were some times with weather delays and some of
Speaker 1: the mechanical problems where I was wondering if they were
Speaker 1: going to be able to complete it, but they were,
Speaker 1: so congratulations to them. It's pretty cool. If you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for a future episode of Forward Thinking, or
Speaker 1: you've got any questions or comments, send them our way
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