Monday, April 25, 2016

Silicon Valley’s tech elite salute high-achieving solar pilots – San Jose Mercury News

MOUNTAIN VIEW — When Bertrand Piccard, the pilot of a solar-powered plane on a round-the-world journey, finally touched down at Moffett Field just before midnight Saturday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin was waiting patiently on the tarmac.

Not far away, two brand-new Tesla Model Xs — lights on, gull-wing doors aloft — beckoned Piccard and co-pilot Andre Borschberg to settle in, likely a more luxurious ride than the cockpit both men have lived in during alternate legs while cruising the globe.

Representatives from SunPower solar energy and other Silicon Valley tech companies lingered in the dark among at least 200 eager spectators who were angling for a chance to meet and greet the Solar Impulse 2 pilots — men whose high-flying exploits during the past year have made them global rock stars of sustainable energy.

Over the next few days, as they ready the plane for its 10th leg of the trip, Piccard and his co-pilot are expected to be feted by Silicon Valley’s tech elite — kindred pioneering spirits whose creative ethos matches those of the venture’s Swiss leaders.

Brin, for example, whose company is among the team’s 80 partners that have donated up to $ 170 million for the project, was back on Sunday visiting the pilots, according to a spokeswoman for Solar Impulse 2.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, whom the team calls a “patron” of the project, was unable to attend Saturday night’s landing in person but provided the two electric cars for the pilots’ use during their stay here.

Depending on the weather, Wednesday is the earliest that the plane, this time piloted by Borschberg, will leave for its next destination, Phoenix.

For Piccard, landing in risk-taking Silicon Valley was an inspired stop. The ultimate goal of his and Borschberg’s odyssey is to show that if an airplane can fly several days and nights in a row with no fuel, then clean technologies can be used on the ground to reduce energy consumption and create profit and jobs.

“Clean technology can bring peace and social opportunities,” Piccard told reporters after landing Saturday night after a 62-hour flight from Hawaii — six hours of it circling the Bay Area until the wind conditions would allow him to descend. “It brings the possibility for people to develop themselves. If you give people clean tech so they can produce their own energy, it’s a huge market, and it’s a way to fight poverty and a way to protect the environment. So there are a lot of advantages.”

The other message the pilots hope to hammer home? Try the impossible.

When the world of aviation refused to subcontract the big pieces of their airplane, for example, Borschberg — a 63-year-old engineer, pilot and entrepreneur — found a shipyard that accepted the assignment to make large pieces of carbon because, as Piccard has said, “they did not know it was impossible.”

The solar-powered plane "Solar Impulse 2" soars over the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday on its Bay Area approach from Hawaii. (Photo by Jean

The solar-powered plane “Solar Impulse 2″ soars over the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday on its Bay Area approach from Hawaii. (Photo by Jean Revillard via Getty Images) ( Handout )

“People have to dare,” said Piccard, 58, a psychiatrist who in 1999, with another colleague, completed the first successful nonstop balloon circumnavigation of the globe — the first circumnavigation requiring no fuel for forward motion. “If they stay in their comfort zones, things will never happen. When you work outside of your comfort zone, everything is possible.”

That mantra is central to what some have called his almost Jules Verne-like heritage: Piccard’s grandfather invented the principle of the pressurized cabin, the stratospheric balloon and the first deep-sea submersible. His oceanographer father devised the first submarine to carry tourists.

So it’s no surprise that when Piccard’s feet hit the ground Saturday, he didn’t seem exhausted. In fact, he was raring to get back up into the skies as soon as possible.

Already, he said, “I miss desperately the last three days — it was the world I love, the world of exploration, the unknown,” he jubilantly told reporters after landing the Solar Impulse 2 at 11:45 p.m.

The plane, whose wings stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, started its globe-circling journey in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Jordan, Myanmar, China and Japan. The trans-Pacific leg of his journey was considered the riskiest part of the solar plane’s global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. After uncertainty about winds, the plane took off from Hawaii on Thursday morning.

The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 45 kph, or 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun’s rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, or about as much as a midsize truck, and is equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night.

“For us, the flight around the world is the beginning of something; it’s not the end,” Borschberg said Saturday night. “We can do so much with the technologies we have here with this airplane. We can do so much to inspire the young generation with this aircraft and to also try to follow their passions, follow their dreams.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment