Solar Impulse forced to land in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Solar Impulse forced to land in Japan

bbc.com

51 pointsLibertatea10 comments

For those of you wondering, it is due to weather concerns: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32955880

They will continue when the conditions are better.

>The experimental craft, which is covered in 17,000 solar cells, took off from Abu Dhabi in March.

Its odd that when this was just working (last few month it flew pretty far) it didn't seem to get much coverage (I hadn't heard of it anyway). News is weird to me in that it like to focus in when things are going wrong, not when something remarkable is happening.

Hope this setback brings some additional coverage.

It's hard to sell several months of "it's still working". After the initial coverage, the only thing really worth talking about are the unexpected things and unexpected things tend to be bad.

That's still an incredible achievement!

It seems the shorter route (great circle) would've been via Kamchatka and Alaska.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=NKG-SFO

As you can see, flying via Hawaii is quite a detour.

They're not going for the short route, it's an endurance tour and also a small test run of their circumnavigation effort. The goal isn't just getting from A to B. Also staying near the equator gives them a better solar exposure as the sun will be directly overhead each day.

The earth tilts so the ideal location is between the Tropic of Cancer durring the Northern solstice, and Tropic of Capricorn durring the December or southern solstice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Capricorn

Also, Solar power per square meter is not the same..

I thought it was supposed to fly above the clouds to get as much sunshine as possible but apparently the cabin isn't pressurized, probably to save weight.

During the day, the plane ascends and then, to save battery power, slowly descends like a glider during the evening.

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