When the Solar Impulse airplane took off on its pioneering round-the-clock flight on Wednesday, the solar panels spread over a wing similar in size to that of an Airbus generated a tiny fraction of an airliner's power.
Each of the prototype's four solar-powered electric propellor motors produces barely more thrust than the flimsy petrol engine that helped the Wright Brothers make history with the world's first powered flight in 1903.
“We're rather far from commercial aviation,” acknowledged Pascal Vuilliomenet of the Swiss federal institute of technology in Lausanne (EPFL), a technical university that is heavily involved in the solar-powered aircraft.
Despite its limitations, the Swiss venture is attracting some of the best engineering brains around, industrial support, cutting-edge aviation technology and electronics, as well as the experience of an ex-astronaut, a former NASA test pilot and ballooning adventurers.
The 70-strong team are driven by the belief that a historic night-flight fuelled by stored energy from the sun will be the first step in proving that a much more widespread use of solar energy is feasible today, not simply in aviation.
Team chief Bertrand Piccard believes that if an aircraft can fly day and night without fuel, no one could challenge the wider value of such technology in the household or at work.
“Solar Impulse is as much a message as an airplane,” said Mr. Piccard on Wednesday.
