BEIJING -- It has the wingspan of a commercial airliner, the weight of an automobile and solar panels to provide enough electricity to light a very large Christmas tree. If this strange contraption actually flies, for some it will be as great a feat as anything achieved at the 2008 Olympics. Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist best known for his 1999 trip around the world in a balloon, is trying to repeat the journey in a solar-powered airplane.
In 1981, U.S. engineer Paul MacCready flew a solar-powered airplane across the English Channel and inventors have been tinkering with the technology ever since. But previous models of solar planes could fly only by day. Piccard and partner Andre Borschberg are developing a prototype at a former military base in Dubendorf, Switzerland. Its wings, which span about 198 feet, are covered with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity. At night, the plane will run on excess electricity stored in batteries. The engineering challenge is to generate enough power to fly the plane and charge the batteries and to keep the weight under 3,500 pounds, about the same as a mid-size car.
Piccard and Borschberg hope to conduct a test run of the single-pilot plane in the spring and by 2011 have a slightly larger two-pilot version to fly around the world.
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