There was some serious concern that they wouldn't find another opportunity with good weather this summer. The Japan - Hawaii leg was the longest planned leg, and really stretched the aircraft's capabilities. If they couldn't find a good weather window in June (near the summer solstice), they faced ever shortening-days, and may have had to wait until next year for another attempt. They may have run out of funding during that year-long wait!

I'm glad they made it!

"Now you can fly longer with no fuel than you can with fuel. So, what Andre has done is not only a historic first for aviation, it's a historic first for renewable energies"

Ok, but how much energy and manpower does it take to keep this in working condition? Even moving the crew from china to japan to service the plain would have cost money and used fuel from conventional transportation.

It's a vehicle on life-support from fuel but not using it directly.

Cool to see things moving along in the right direction though

One step at a time. It took 11 years to get from the Spirit of St. Louis to the first commercial transatlantic flight.

but not farther "His jet-powered Virgin GlobalFlyer vehicle completed a full circumnavigation of the world in that time [76 hours], travelling more than 41,000km."

I guess you could travel farther, given enough time. Someone should calculate how big the wingspan would need to be to power a commercial airliner, probably the width of Texas? :)

Still, great stuff - this is how all great tech starts

Oh, I think it is an amazing achievement, but the weather limitations and speed are problematic for any use as a people carrier. On the other had, there is a large amount of uses cases outside of people transport and many of them are quite exciting.

Could potentially develop hybrid systems to reduce the fuel needs of people-movers.

Another comment asks about what kind of support was necessary to make this solar-powered flight. It happens that Gizmodo (yeah, I know) has a detailed article about that issue, "Flying a Solar Plane Around the World Takes One Hell of a Ground Crew," published today.

http://gizmodo.com/flying-a-solar-plane-around-the-world-tak...

Very interesting link. Highlights the fallacy of ecologist marketing operations: Good intentions, but negative carbon footprint.

Anyone else wonders why both Space and the Solar Plane mission have screens under the desk level? Ergonomists and chiropractors clearly point this out as a bad setup for employee's bealth, plus they're all ridiculously moving their laptop sideways to look at their 27" screen. It seems their desk design wants to communicate a "space mission" ambition although it couldn't be worse for the body.

So we should avoid talking about ecology if the communication itself has a non-negative carbon footprint ? Good luck with that!

As the article quotes: the goal never was to prentend making a zero emission operation, but rather to sensibilize people to the fact alternatives can exist, and are worth studing.

A guy dedicates everything to build a solar powered plane that can travel around the world, just for the sake of it. If that's not some pure Hacker spirit, then I don't know what it is...

The press is the press, it is optimized for presenting it's own perception as an absoluth truth.

> we should avoid talking about ecology if the communication itself has a non-negative carbon footprint

No, we shouldn't. But we often advertise non-green products as green solutions, and that's terrible because it disrupts people's understanding of global climate change. People believe the electric car is green, whereas its carbon footprint is sensibly equal to the petrol-based car if you include the electricity/petrol lifecycle. People dodge the idea that the carbon footprint will always be further reduced by carpooling/public transports/not moving across the Earth every week, rather than by saving 5% or 10% of the petrol.

Yes, we should advertise about ecology. No we shouldn't advertise anti-ecologist products. If you read between the lines, that's what the author is demonstrating.

Solar Impulse is not a product, it's a hack.

Electric cars carbon footprint will eventually decrease with massive adoption.

Petrol sucks. doesn't scale.

EDIT: And yes, it's true that selling something as a ecological when it isn't, is bad. But at least it's a small step in the right direction.

FYI this story is a little behind. Borschberg safely landed in Hawaii after a solo flight of some 117 hours - breaking the previous record by a huge amount along with some other ones. You can check out the whole last leg on the flight log, with pics and tweets and such:

http://www.solarimpulse.com/leg-8-from-Nagoya-to-Hawaii

Impressive achievement! A further update: Solar Impulse landed today at about 6:00 AM local time in Kalaeloa airport after a 118-hour flight. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33383521

Congrats to the Solar Impulse team. Surprised this isn't being commented on more here.

There is a limited AP and he did naps at max 20min each.

This is crazy - just put yourself in that scenario and pause for even a minute.. Amazing to say the least.

Hah, wow, interesting timing. I just finished reading a decent book on Kindle about Solar Impulse: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00Q56MYUC

It was a bummer Solar Impulse wasn't able to do the non-stop pacific ocean leg, but still, it's pretty amazing. I'm surprised that this just hasn't picked up more news coverage. :( It's completely historic..

Has he actually been awake for 76 hours straight or is there an autopilot feature he can enable to get a few micronaps in?

AFAIK he sleeps for short periods when the plane can cruise without intervention. The ground crew would wake him if anything needed attending to. He also does yoga in the cabin to stay limber.