A pilot is about to spend five days alone over the Pacific in a solar airplane
Early next week — assuming the weather holds — a lone man will be drifting across the Pacific Ocean for days on end, floating slowly and deliberately from the eastern edge of China all the way to Hawaii. It’s a journey that will take him across the most featureless, unforgiving expanse of saltwater on Earth.
This is no sailboat, though: he’ll be 5 miles above the planet in a freezing, cramped capsule, without enough oxygen to even stay conscious.
Solar Impulse 2 is one of the most ambitious aircraft ever built, because it’s powered by sunlight alone; there’s not a drop of gasoline spinning its four propeller engines. It’s a sprawling mass of carbon fiber and silicon with a wingspan 11 and a half feet longer than a Boeing 747-8 jumbo…
Source:: The Verge
