The Swiss-built Solar Impulse 2 airplane continued its fuel-free, round-the-world odyssey today with a nearly 17-hour flight from Oklahoma to Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright Brothers.
The solar-powered plane took off from Tulsa International Airport before sunrise at 4:23 a.m. CT (2:23 a.m. PT), and landed after dark at Dayton International Airport at 9:56 p.m. ET (6:56 p.m. PT).. In between, Solar Impulse 2 swept over a wide swath of America’s heartland, including Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
After landing, pilot Andre Borschberg was met by two relatives of the Wright Brothers, great-grandnephew Stephen Wright and great-grandniece Amanda Wright Lane. They gave models of the Wright Flyer to Borschberg and Solar Impulse’s other co-founder, Swiss psychiatrist-adventurer Bertrand Piccard.
“It was a dream to come here, and we made it,” Borschberg told the Wrights.
Piccard noted that Dayton served as the base for Orville and Wilbur Wright’s airplane-building operation more than a century ago. “People told the Wright Brothers, and us, what we wanted to achieve was impossible,” he said. “They were wrong.”
Amanda Wright Lane from the #WrightBrothers family welcomes our two #solar pilots in #Dayton ??? pic.twitter.com/vG7SezlbRO
— SOLAR IMPULSE (@solarimpulse) May 22, 2016
Today’s flight marked the 12th leg of a 22,000-mile journey that began in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi, and has included stops in Oman, India, Myanmar, China and Japan. Solar Impulse 2 made the five-day flight from Japan to Hawaii last July, but the plane’s batteries overheated. As a result, the eastward trek had to be put on hold for nine months while repairs were made and plans were relaid.
The odyssey resumed in April with a 2.5-day flight to California’s Silicon Valley, followed by stopovers in Phoenix and Tulsa.
The Solar Impulse effort is funded by an estimated $150 million in corporate contributions, with the aim of demonstrating advanced aerospace technologies that range from lightweight composite materials to solar energy.
In 2013, the first Solar Impulse plane flew from coast to coast across America. That set the stage for the current project. Piccard and Borschberg have been taking turns in the plane’s solo cockpit.
Solar Impulse 2’s 236-foot wingspan is wider than that of a Boeing 747 jet, but it weighs only 5,000 pounds – about as much as an SUV. The plane is covered with more than 17,000 solar cells, generating enough electricity to power its four scooter-type electric motors throughout the night.
The drawback is that Solar Impulse 2’s cruising speed is only about 40 mph. Borschberg could have easily driven to Dayton faster.
Weather is a key consideration for Solar Impulse’s flight schedule: Forecasters determined that today provided a good opportunity to avoid clouds and rain, which would pose dangerous difficulties for the lightweight solar-powered plane.
In a blog posting, the Solar Impulse team explained why the crossing from California to New York was broken up into several legs.
“Breaking the journey into parts makes weather conditions a lot easier to manage,” the team said. “We only need to deal with one weather obstacle at a time within the limits of reliable weather forecasts. This also allows us to find a flight window that satisfies Air Traffic Control considerations, such as keeping safe distances from congested air spaces and military zones.”
The plane is expected to be kept for a few days in a mobile hangar set up in Dayton, and will then continue its journey east. Solar Impulse’s final U.S. destination is New York, which will set the stage for a climactic Atlantic crossing to Europe and the eventual return to Abu Dhabi.
“If everything goes well, we’ll land in Abu Dhabi in July this year,” Piccard told a crowd of onlookers in Dayton. “And in 10 years’ time, there will probably be electric airplanes.”
