Crossing the North Pacific at the stately speed of 39 kt TAS on solar power. During the day it is a slow climb to 30,000' while the panels are producing enough for both the climb and recharge the batteries from the previous night. During night slowly lose altitude for less energy draw from the batteries (25,000') till morning and repeat.

http://www.solarimpulse.com/leg-9-from- ... in_View_CA

Click on Virtual Pilot.

Very impressive achievement. Thanks for posting. Looks like he'll make landfall on the Pacific Coast (Mountain View) sometime tomorrow! Talk about "keeping it in the air"!

wow interesting!

I've been paying zero attention to this trip, but they had a bit on this morning's TV news about it and I gotta admit that the Solar Impulse looked pretty cool cruising over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Well heck the solar powered airplanes we flew 30 years ago would make about 90 knots on a good day in the desert

Not so much over water though

Congratulations to the Solar Impulse team for a spectacular technical achievement. Electric airplanes are already here now, and will be getting more common. I'm guessing back country operations will be the very last application where electric airplanes are unable to compete in the real world. But it's very possible that "distributed electric" powered by some sort of IC alternator drive will become a viable thing, even for remote operations.