In a surprising turn of events, we find ourselves in a position whereby we can follow two brave, pioneering, inspiring and revolutionary individuals as they fly across the world using nothing but solar energy. We wish you the best of luck and are amazed by the work you have done so far and wait eagerly to see the next development. This will only become easier as solar technology improves.

Like many of you I am an avid Sci-Fi fan… and I fought off the Super Man and Star Trek puns to make a serious point here. Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg have taken on a truly phenomenal feat of engineering and blue sky thinking, to create something beautiful. The synergy and the achievement is in itself the sort of thing you would only ever find in the mysterious world of Star Trek and comic book hero’s, I salute you.

The solar powered plane, began its journey from Abu Dhabi on the 9th of March last year flying across Asia and is attempting to fly the globe, if all had gone to plan they would have finished last year. Sadly however there was issues with the batteries and they spent a few months fixing them up and have begun the next leg to carry on the stages, sharing and switching the pilots seat between the two men between the journeys.

This is at present a single seat plane that weighs no more than a car but has a wing span of a Boeing 747. The plane works by raising to 9,000 meters at the beginning of the journeys in peak sun and then going down slowly towards 1600 meters. This rise and fall means that the high energy climb happens at peak generation and then the plane uses less energy as the sun goes down meaning the plane works in waves so that as the sun comes back up the plane raises again and so on.

If you want more information on the plane or the two individuals that are taking it on this epic journey I have found some links for you.

CNN have a nice video here that shows you inside the cockpit of the Solar Impulse 2

Reuters have a video of take off from New York to Spain

A post from the BBC after the first leg was completed last year

The question I would pose is that while this is early days, will there be a time in which you can spend weeks on a solar powered holiday plane? Or living on a plane for for a prolonged period or working on one. This may well be possible though obvious practicalities will have to be worked out first. Maybe Sci-Fi can be science fact in our lifetimes, it certainly seems to be heading that way and its made even sweeter knowing that its sustainable.