Why don't they do it non-stop, like the Voyager?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager Sure the Voyager used
gasoline but it had to carry all of it along with food, water, and other
essentials. And they did it in days rather than seasons. With lithium
batteries and solar cells, what's to stop them? And frankly, what's the
use of either?

On 3/16/2015 2:29 AM, Kilo-Bravo wrote:
Surely the most remarkable adventure in this century is the RTW-Flight of swiss made Solar Impulse 2, operating without a single drop of Kerosine or Gas.
The 2.300 kg Solar Impulse 2 is propelled by 4 x 17.5 hp electric-motors powered by the endless energy of the sun, collected during daytime by 17.248 Solar-Cells and stored in Lithium Accu-Packs for the night.
The RTW-Flight is divided into 12 independent flight-segments with planned endurance-time between one and five days lasting flights.

Two of the 12 segments have already been performed without any problems, 10 more flights must be done. The complete RTW-journey lasts until July - August, depending on wether-conditions during spring and summer 2015 at the northern hemisphere.

UL-Segelflug.de has just started a new blog-series about the outstanding solar-project. The "Kickstart-Blog", describing the adventure in details can be read via the following link: http://www.ul-segelflug.de/blog/rtw-...impulse-2.html

Estimate departure for next flight-operation is March 18th, ETD 00:30 UTC / ETA 14:00 UTC.

All flights can be monitored via Flight-Tracker and/or Live-TV and all flights will be accompanied by blogs at UL-Segelflug.de/blog/rtw-solar-impulse-2.html.

Best regards from Germany
Klaus

--
Dan Marotta