Comments on: Solar-Powered Plane to Perform Test Flight

By: Lycoris

Lycoris — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:46 +0000

And the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to be flying on clean coal liquid transpo fuel by 2011.

By: Turner

Turner — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:46 +0000

Get back to me when you have a solar-powered airliner capable of carrying 400 passengers non-stop LAX to Sidney. I’ll be waiting.

By: Gisela

Gisela — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:46 +0000

In what police are calling “an incident bordering on the bizarre” a solar-powered plane making it’s inaugural flight across Iowa crashed killing 18 people. Among the dead were 17 children from Eagle Peak junior high and their eighth grade science teacher, Mrs. Shanner. Investigators said the problem started when a solar eclipse took place halfway through the flight, meanwhile on the ground, in preparation for the eclipse, Mrs. Shanner’s eighth grade science class put on their protective eyewear. Firefighters said they are still pulling limbs from the surrounding area.

By: Bima

Bima — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:45 +0000

There could be lots of applications for this besides just carrying humans. It could be used as a spy plane or a cell phone tower or a cheap geo-sync satellite.

By: Xanti

Xanti — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:45 +0000

Solar-powered flight will always be a bit of a pipe dream.The big problems remain creating high-efficiency solar cells to capture the energy, and an efficient way of storing the energy for night flying (the batteries involved are generally one of the heaviest components).But then even if you could solve these challenges you’ve still only got an aircraft that can barely carry a single person, and the manufacturing costs to build/maintain such a craft would be huge.

By: Iden

Iden — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:45 +0000

I heard that they don’t use any alternative fuel or so, for world tour on this tiny one…is this correct?? if yes, how do they manage in case of emergency?~ramki

By: Neka

Neka — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:45 +0000

Yeah, remember this story on Digg recently about the Chinese ship being built with solar sails? dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/11/solar …That is a lot of solar sails just to supply 5% (!) of the ships energy consumption.Still a long way to go, but nice to see we are making progress.Bobby idlewordship.com

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:44 +0000

How about a solar powered monorail?

By: Frideswide

Frideswide — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:44 +0000

speeking of solar power, have any of you watched “what happened to the electric car?” it’s crazy…hopefully, things will change soon…

By: Valeska

Valeska — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:09:44 +0000

This is super cool.But it’s not much more than that. There’s no possibly way *scientifically* that you’ll ever be able to fit enough solar panels on something such as a passenger plane. I could see some cool spy plane stuff though done with this.