JUL 01

This is a fine STUNT.
No airplane is large enough to carry enough solar cells to enable it to DO REAL WORK; to carry many passengers or cargo.
However, an airship IS large enough. (not a blimp)
Turtle Airships is working towards this goal, of creating true, viable solar powered flight.
(I'm Darrell Campbell, CEO of Turtle Airships)

www.turtleairships.com

If the solar panel carry on plane and bring the solar charge battery,Is it so heavy?

Anyway, this is a good idea for air plane energy generation.

detectorlam

http://thehomemadesolarenergy.1bedroomfurnitureking.com
http://www.thehomemadesolarenergy.com

thats a good way of saving gas

You can talk about this on http://planet520.org
The continuation of the now closed Greenpeace forum.
Join; share, learn!

I do agree with all of your comments,but as a ex security personel,i would vote 100% for the turtle airship,they are the future of very cheap air travel/air freight!

There are other things to do besides carrying pax or cargo. Remote sensing and surveillance (e.g. police and military work) come to mind. Putting temporary communications relay stations (maybe even cell sites) over disaster areas. Probably other things we haven't given much thought to because we never had the capability before.

That's not to put down airships of either rigid or non-rigid design. There is a lot they can do too, but like this aircraft, they have their limitations. We need a mix of capabilities, and shouldn't cherry-pick one over the other.

Airships, and I imagine this solar-powered plane, are too darn slow! Until you can make an airship that will fly at .78 mach, it'll never replace a jet-fueled airliner. Nor will a solar-powered plane i imagine, for the same reason that Mr. Campbell cites. The good thing about these kind of ideas, though, is that they spark other good ideas! I'd love to see a day when airliners are powered by a clean, cheap resource instead of Middle-East controlled fuels.

This dialog on design and usability of solar powered aircraft is good reading and thought provoking. Two concerns pop to mind: Rigidity and payload. These are the two things that need to be ironed out in R & D. Working with solar collecting materials, wings and the needed flex of a wing has to fall into a workable ratio. I feel that we have outstanding engineers that, provided they can innovate outside the box a tad, can come up with the solution to this particular problem. We have learned in the past how to work with new and un-familiar materials years ago, when first working with carbon fiber instead of sheet aluminum.

These things are the forecast of things to come. Such things as surveillance aircraft for the present is out of the question. Think of the width of the wing span to carry enough solar cells to use this aircraft. These planes are unwieldy and need perfect conditions for take off and landing. Turtle Airships are a beginning for solar power use that will probably materialize as solar cells mature in their ability to produce energy at hopefully lower costs and using less of them.

There are batteries that can produce enough storage to power light personal aircraft which exist now. Large business in conjunction with governments and the "controllers" will not allow us to upset their grasp on our pocket books.

When the real break through methods for electrical flight, solar flight and many other things are finally brought out for use it will be found that the big players which now control the cost of things will have bought up the manufacturing and the costs will be very high to consumers as is fossil fuel now. In other words it will be sell out your new ideas to us or lose your life. A Current practice.

Take the company Ovionics (sp?)which has a process for making solar cells, cheaply. I believe the name of the inventor and founder of the company of the solar cells was Oshvinsky. Well, along comes Texaco and they buy him out. Guess what, this is the "establishment" procedure. The big players will own the new "things" and continue to gouge us. The Ovionic solar cells, now owned by Texaco are not on the market setting new lower prices for solar cell production as Texaco is of he big player approved gene pool.

Take the Tesla electric car for example. The big players are buying into the company, though it recently went public with a stock offering. Foes this means that we will finally get something in our lives that will save us money? Not likely!!!

The Chevy Volt is coming out at a very high price. Battery cost is always claimed as a major cause. The battery advances which have been in use for many decades, but hidden from the public general knowledge, are purposely held back from us. So new inferior battery means are being developed such as lithium batteries, the cost of which is kept artificially high, when batteries that will take a car across the USA with two renewing charges of 10 minutes or less in time used already exist and are kept from public use by evil designing men.

We will be caused to pay for the huge astronomical costs for infrastructure for charging stations and different and varying competing methods for fueling new transportation when the technology needed is held back from the public. Why, people that have energy and very cheaply can turn their minds to cleaning out the government and the "controllers" The present set of controls is to always keep us in bondage to taxes for dictatorial government and it's money rich powerful "controllers". The concerns of those that control economies is to use us as the cash cows that they will constantly bleed.

Wake up and smell the stink!

It is a fantastic piece of engineering and a great example of how we can more humanity forwards but some media outlets seem to think that this is going to lead to pollution free jumbo jets! Let’s not get carried away, this technology is likely to be more use to the military than commercial airlines.

I'd love to know the answer to this question! It's only a matter of time I guess untill airline technology (energy / power) improves