Rise of the sunbird
On March 10, minutes before midnight, Solar Impulse-2 (Si2) hovered gently over Ahmedabad’s skyline, the LED lights on its giant wingspan flickering brightly. The city’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International airport was clogged with flight traffic and the world’s only solar-powered aircraft would spend nearly 30 minutes in the air before landing to set a world record. “It looked like an eagle, steadily circling in the sky,” said Vikram Jani, a student who was part of the throng that had gathered at the airport to witness aviation history in the making. Elsewhere in the city, as Si2 prepared for landing after a 14-hour “fantastic” flight from Oman, residents took to the streets and terraces to catch a glimpse of the no-fuel-only-solar bird. The last time Ahmedabad was this excited to see an airplane was perhaps in 1932, when the first commercial flight flying between Karachi and Mumbai made a stopover here. Pilot Bertrand Piccard, looking fresh and relaxed, emerged from the craft to wave to a large contingent of enthusiasts. Already, Si2 had broken a world record: It had covered 1,465km between Oman and India, the longest journey yet for a solar-powered flight.
Si2 is no ordinary aircraft. It’s a zero-emission, no-fuel aircraft running solely on solar power, attempting to circumnavigate the world in 25 days spread over five months, 10 countries and 35,000km. It took pilots Piccard and Andre Borschberg 13 years to perfect the design for a solar-only aircraft. On March 9, Si2 began the first leg of its journey, leaving the hangar at Abu Dhabi for a 430km ride to Muscat, Oman. A journey that takes a commercial airliner just over an hour took the single-seater Si2 13 hours 1 minute, as it cruised at an altitude of 19,000 feet. On the second leg, between Muscat and Ahmedabad, Si2 flew for nearly 15 hours over 1,400km, crossing its first sea leg over the Arabian Sea.
Its 72m-long wingspan is longer than that of a Boeing-747 and nearly as long as that of an Airbus A380 superjumbo. It carries 17,248 solar cells, which run the aircraft and also recharge four lithium polymer batteries for night travel. At 2,300kg, it weighs as much as a family car, but less than 1 per cent of the Airbus superjumbo. The Si2 can climb to an altitude of 28,000 feet and it can stay in the sky for several days and nights. But it has an optimal speed of 20 knots or roughly 35kmph, which is slower than an average professional cyclist, slower than even a pigeon!
While Solar Impulse-1, which made the first manned solar-powered flight when it flew for 26 hours in Switzerland in 2010, was just a prototype, Si2 is attempting a trip around the world with several more challenges — long sea legs, night-time flights and difficult solo trips for the pilots. The aim of the flight is not to facilitate commercially viable solar-powered planes, but to show what’s possible. “When the Apollo astronauts went to the moon, it wasn’t to launch tourism, open hotels and make money,” says Piccard. “It was to inspire the world.”
Life in the cockpit, however, is not going to be easy for Piccard and Borschberg. While they are both trained to pilot Si2, it has just one seat, which comes with a built-in toilet, that’s less than 4 cubic metres in volume, a confinement that can only be matched by the public phone booth. The pilots will take turns to steer the flight, catching only 20-minute catnaps as they have to remain alert at all times. The cabin has neither heating nor oxygen and the in-flight food is “dehydrated and vacuum-packaged”. To beat the intense stress of what will be a rough ride, the pilots have undergone serious training to prepare for long solo flights. They have taken to yoga and self-hypnosis to remain calm during trying times like cloudy patches, rainy weather, long sea journeys and night flights. “Yoga has helped throughout the journey. Self-hypnosis is also a way to restore energy and stay fit,” says the 63-year-old Borschberg. Under the training of yoga practitioner Sanjeev Bhanot, both pilots are using asanas to stay warm when it’s cold and to get energised when they’re tired.
Si2 is unlikely to break any speed records, but what’s more exciting for Broschberg and Piccard is the energy efficiency. The project is more a symbol of clean technology than an aviation journey. “This is the way we demonstrate that clean energy can achieve the impossible. It’s not just a human or technical adventure. This is for a cleaner world with a better quality of life,” says Piccard, who first thought of a round-the-world solar flight after successfully completing a round-the-world trip in a hot air balloon in 1985. Gujarat, where the aircraft will be parked in a special hangar for four days, was a natural destination, thanks to its remarkable progress with solar energy. Over 900 megawatt of solar power projects are under operation in the state.
While weathermen are stationed in Morocco, the pilots are travelling with 65 members of ground staff. On the aircraft’s website, tiniest details about its movements are being recorded — logbook entries, telemetry data and satellite imagery. The website can even tell you if the pilots remembered to have lunch!
Si2 will stop for a night halt next in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi on Sunday, before taking off for Myanmar, China, Hawaii and New York. From there, Si2 will begin its return journey to Abu Dhabi via either southern Europe or North Africa. On its journey around the world, the aircraft will face tough passages across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, where the pilots will have to travel non-stop for five days and five nights. The longest single leg will see one of them fly solo over the Pacific from Nanjing, China to Hawaii — a distance of 8,500km.
As Piccard says of every port of call — “We hope that people will always remember that a solar airplane landed there.”
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