Geneva - A dainty solar-powered plane with wings the width of a giant Airbus will retrace exploits in aviation history, including Charles Lindbergh's first ever transatlantic crossing, before a pioneering round-the-world flight in 2011, project leaders said on Tuesday.
Solar Impulse
The Solar Impulse project led by Swiss round-the-world balloon pioneer Bertrand Piccard, undertook real-time computer simulations of a circumnavigation this week, a year before a prototype is due to take to the air.
The virtual flights, which can be followed on the Internet, are designed to replicate long-distance journeys through existing, real weather conditions by the high-tech but lightweight and slow-moving aircraft .
The ground crew will try to ensure Solar Impulse has maximum exposure to the sun during the daytime to charge its batteries, but will also guide it around or above turbulence, unfavourable winds and bad weather.
Each of its five legs around the world should last three to five days each.
"It's a real opportunity to learn."
"We have no idea if the virtual flight will be a success or not. We're dealing with real conditions, so it may be a failure," Piccard said.
"It's a real opportunity to learn," he told journalists at the control centre in Geneva Airport.
The team is adamant that they will try a first non-stop crossing of the United States by a solar powered aircraft and a first transatlantic flight before they launch the keynote circumnavigation of the globe in May 2011.
"My dream is for a flight one day from New York to Paris, this is the most difficult because of the weather," said team meteorologist Luc Trullemans.
"For the first time in my life I'm always looking for sunshine," he added.
The carbon-fibre Solar Impulse will have an 80 metre wingspan equivalent to that of a 580 tonne Airbus A380, and 250 square metres of solar panels.
Yet it will weigh just two tonnes and barely squeeze the lone pilot - Piccard - into its narrow, ultra-computerised, cockpit.
The solar panels charge up ultralight lithium batteries which power four electric propellor engines along the wings.
The Swiss adventurer underlined that the €70-million (about R660-million) project - the price of two business jets - was not the template for a solar-powered commercial airliner, but designed to stimulate ideas for pollution-free travel.
Attractive new energy
"What's sure is that if we consume energy like we do now, we're going to the wall. Solar Impulse shows how solar energy can be attractive, it's showing that new energy is sexy," he added.
Piccard dismissed current attempts at solar powered flight as "largely anecdotal," because they involved relatively short flights in daytime in perfect weather.
"That doesn't show the potential of solar power, it shows its limits," he added.
A first prototype is being designed and built in Switzerland by the 45-strong team using innovative and sometimes untested technology.
It will later be succeeded by the aircraft that will make the record attempts, possibly taking off from the Gulf region for the circumnavigation.
The project initiated in 2003 brings Piccard back together with some of his companions on the first non-stop balloon flight around the world in 1999, including British co-pilot Brian Jones and Trullemans.
Piccard, who comes from a dynasty of pioneers, said that the idea of Solar Impulse partly came from being goaded about the balloon flight being the last challenge available.
"It became obvious that the adventures of the 21st century would not be adventures of conquest, but adventures to improve the quality of life," he explained.
Piccard's grandfather, Auguste, and associate Paul Kipfer, became the first human beings to fly into the stratosphere in the 1930s, in a balloon.
By contrast, his father, Jacques, plumbed the depths of the earth, and made the deepest dive in history, reaching 10 915 metres in a submarine in the Marianas Trench in 1960.