Solar-powered plane

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  • 26 July, 2016 at 1:34 am #850002
    Leeny
    Participant

    I’m watching a live news feed about a solar-powered airplane that just landed in Abu Dhabi after flying around the world. It had two pilots, and flew 2763 kilometers without fuel. Interesting.

    26 July, 2016 at 1:47 am #850003
    katzenjammer
    Participant

    Very interesting. I know absolutely nothing about solar-power but due to this lack of knowledge find myself wondering how plane would fly by night, or when there’s no sun like on cloudy day. My science-challenged mind is very evident, I know. 😯 🙄

    26 July, 2016 at 1:37 pm #850017
    TrufflesMom
    Participant

    My limited knowledge of solar power is that for things like the plane the panels store power in batteries so as long as the sun is out they are charging the batteries. Then it runs off the batteries alone when no sun. Still I would imagine too many cloudy days or the like and they would run out of power.

    26 July, 2016 at 1:52 pm #850019
    lagatta
    Participant

    I’m fairly sure that such a plane would fly above the cloud layer.

    It is a wonderful breakthrough – there were interviews about this (with staff on the project, not the pilots) on Radio-Canada this morning (the French side of CBC). It will be a long time until such non-fossil-fuel technology will be fully functional for commercial flights, but they say it can mean developing hybrid aircraft that will consume far less fuel and be much less polluting.

    Did anyone else get a chuckle out of one of the pilots bearing the name “Captain Picard”?

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