The last word - 2008-05-16 11:10 (am)
First off, I must apologise for my little slip of typing Prince Albert of Italy when of course it should have been Monaco. It was corrected very quickly and I was a little red-faced for a while. To be honest I don't understand what the fuss was about as I was only a few kilometres in error, but apparently having risked causing an international incident, it was not my finest hour!
But as you see, I'm still here - probably only because I can now be the team target of ridicule.
Flushed with success, the team are now preparing for the final debrief. Andre has had a shower which I'm sure has come as a great relief to both him and everyone else here. He is also looking more like the CEO now he has changed out of those, how can I say - interesting tights.
The place is looking very spruce for the royal visit. It's good to know that it is not just the English who, when preparing for this kind of event have the rule "If it moves, clean it. If it doesn't move, paint it".
What valuable lessons have we learned, other than keep me away from a diplomatic job? The behaviour of the simulated aeroplane has given us great cause for confidence. The fact that Andre managed to land it at a variety of difficult alpine airfields means that it is more manoeuvrable than we suspected. We know the control forces (the amount of strength one needs to move the controls) in the real aircraft will be very different - possibly around 40 kilograms, but the slow speed and the good stability of the integrated dihedral wing shape indicate an optimistic outlook. Dihedral by the way is a posh word for "bent-up wings".
We have seen that we are almost there with the ergonomics of the cockpit with just a few minor improvements to be made, this valuable information would of course have been impossible to achieve without these marathon flights. Andre did not suffer the same discomfort around the bottom area as Bertrand which leads us to the conclusion that we need to feed Bertrand up a bit and put a little more flesh on those bones. I could have told them that long before the simulation, as I am one of the world's privileged few outside of his immediate family and personal physician who has actually seen the now famous part of his anatomy!
The flight simulator will continue to be a very important and valuable tool during the lead up to witnessing the first test flights of the Solar Impulse prototype next year.
I must pay tribute to the members of the team who have worked solidly since last Tuesday with a great spirit despite lack of sleep. You may never have heard their names before and may not again, but believe me they fulfil as vital a role as any of the famous players.
Last but not least thanks to you for following this part of our adventure and especially those who kindly sent in some very nice comments. The nature of this project and it's potential for delivering a very important message to the world on sustainable development is meaningless without the awareness and support of you, our friends.
Final touch-down - 2008-05-16 07:18 (am)
Good morning. Andre has just landed the second of the two Solar Impulse virtual flights for 2008 to a great deal of applause and a large bowl of fresh fruit especially prepared for his breakfast. His staff are such creeps! It was a nice homecoming of course, hugs all around and real tears from Ela his daughter. Not sure if it was because she was pleased to see him or the fact that tonight she will have to be home early.
When I saw him climb out of the cockpit I experienced my greatest regret - he was wearing skin tight lycra ski pants which might look OK on the slopes, but in a flight simulator? Had I seen these before takeoff, I could have had much more fun with the blogs. His flight through the night continued to be pretty much faultless and we only managed to catch him out on one of the mental exercises which he had to complete immediately on being woken from a 20 minute sleep period. The question was 666/(333-299). You try working that one out without paper and pencil! Even I agreed with his assertion that it was a bit unfair, and he wants to see the author of this particular puzzle in his office this afternoon! By the way, the answer is 19.588235.
So now if you see the webcam you will note that I am looking extremely busy at my computer. This is because everyone else has to tidy the place in preparation for the visit of Prince Albert of Monaco later this morning. I even put on clean underwear today, and its only the 16th of the month! I haven't had an opportunity to review the technical data of the night, so if I find anything interesting (what could possibly be more interesting than Andre's tights?), I will enter it on the next and probably final blog.
Romance in the night sky - 2008-05-16 10:21 (pm)
This is the last night of this Virtual Flights week. Brian said that I would be taking over his blogs, but I will be going to bed at the same time he will (he asked me to ad, in different rooms, of course). Nevertheless, I would like to share my impressions with you. First of thank, thank you Brian for your kind compliment, you are really too kind...
The last night here is more crowded than the one when Bertrand was in the simulator. I think those who weren't present at the first night with Bertrand also wanted to experience what we described as being incredibly beautiful and magic. So here we are, about a dozen including a camera team recording André's starry night. A bit earlier, just when the sun was setting, André started to sing:
"I am flying, I am flying,
Like a bird cross the sky.
I am flying, passing high clouds,
To be with you, to be free."
It just suited the moment so well and was very poetical.
The night is calm, except for radio noises, but André has stopped singing. Is he sleeping now or just enjoying the moon rising?
Medical stuff - 2008-05-15 08:05 (pm)
Let's leave aside the unpleasant aspects of body odour and elements of a digestive nature and turn our attention to subjects vital to the success of the longer flights to come. First of all though, thank you for the comments. Clara - I love you too.
We will finish this training exercise with two sets of 24 hours of medical data recordings, one for each pilot. From this the geeky but highly clever ones amongst us will formulate a computer model which is capable of building an individual sleep recognition pattern. This can then be fed into the control computer to predict how much sleep an individual pilot will need and the ideal time to encourage the sleep periods to take place.
Another item of interest is the blood oxygen saturation levels. Monitoring this will give us the reassurance that the on-board oxygen system is operating correctly. If the saturation falls below 86% at altitude an alarm will be generated. Interesting stuff this oxygen. If levels drop we become hypoxic (clever term for lack of oxygen in the blood). Now the first symptom of hypoxia strangely enough is often euphoria. So if we are slowly about to die through lack of oxygen we are really happy about it; not a good thing for a pilot! The proper aeroplane will have readouts of all the body monitoring sensors so that the pilot can see for himself his state of awareness, stress levels, blood oxygen etc. He can also use these to monitor his physical exercise and relaxation needs. One challenge we face is to integrate all this into a lightweight single system suitable for Solar Impulse. I told you it would get more interesting! Andre is still doing depressingly well, and Bertrand has taken over the control panel whilst I write this. We witnessed a beautiful virtual sunset a few minutes ago which enthused Bertrand to start singing and the rest of us to formulate a plan to stop him as soon as possible. I think they might let me go to bed soon, so I will hand over to the beautiful Selina who is so much more talented than I in so many areas - prettier too!
Flying lesson - 2008-05-15 05:32 (pm)
I am taking a little time out from the instructor control panel to update you all. Andre is eating a meal. I call it a meal as frankly I could not tell you diplomatically what it looked like to me. I think he called it Burvik, but I have no idea what that is, thankfully. Raymond (flight director) is sleeping, so I am in charge; oh the feeling of power!
The flight is progressing well. Andre continues to impress with his flying ability and I am at a loss to think of something sarcastic to say about him. We did a practice approach to Meiringen which was pretty exciting being in the mountains. I am keen to get some flight training in aeroplane mountain techniques. I can do it well in a balloon of course, but as you can imagine its a little different in an aircraft. So I've received my first lesson free of charge with Andre demonstrating the techniques and precautions when mountain flying. I say free of charge, but have to say that I won't be surprised if, when he exits the simulator he has his open palm extended in my direction. I wonder if he accepts pesetas.
Michele Piccard has been in mission control this afternoon. I had to tell her that the VIP lounge is not really the place to massage her husbands bottom, and anyway she is almost 24 hours too late. But on second thoughts, if she insists (and she is the project presidents wife after all), may I stand in the queue for similar treatment? I'm trying to persuade the medical team here to give me some information for the next blog. So hopefully it may be a little more interesting than my standard drivel, but I suspect we won't be able to reveal anything REALLY juicy.
Landscape - 2008-05-15 02:40 (pm)
Someone asked why I am writing most of the blogs on our site. The easy answer is that it needs to be in English and guess who the only Englishman on the project is! I think the real answer is that the team in here are trying to keep me out of mischief by keeping me busy at all times! I try to tell them that the simple resolution is to allow me to return to bed, but for some reason this does not seem to arouse a sympathetic response. In preparation for my night shift as flight controller, I sat in on Andre’s last flight exercise which was a simulated power failure at 4,000ft about 5 miles north of Payerne.
In order to lose height he carried out 3 orbits (360 degree turns in a neat circle) two with precisely 2 degrees angle of bank and one with 5 degrees. He then set himself up on the approach for runway 23 at Payerne and at the end of the downwind leg he carried out another orbit to position himself at the correct height. These are fairly standard manoeuvres for any pilot, but I have to tell you that I watched in complete awe the instruments which seemed to be glued onto the correct setting of speed and attitude, and he made the powerless landing absolutely centimetre perfect. This is the only time that I will be so nice to him without a sting in the tail. But I have to tell you that I wish I could fly like that! There were also questions regarding the fabulous scenery we are using in our simulator.
For the visualisation element of the scenery and panel we are using the widely available X-Plane software which gives us the wonderful sights of the starlit night over the lake of Neuchatel and the great surface details of features and airfields. With the initial assistance of Dassault our engineers have developed our flight dynamic modelling tool in-house. Of course there are several other contributors mentioned on our main website so forgive me for not taking space in this blog to mention EPFL, Omega and Sony!
Dubai - 2008-05-15 01:46 (pm)
You may remember that I mentioned we are running another background simulation for one of the legs for the round the world flight. This was from Seville in Spain to Dubai. This simulated aircraft will be landing in Dubai at 1615 Swiss time. We have been using actual weather conditions and current air traffic control data. The flight has been pretty straightforward other than a weather scare when we flew over Israel.
The forecast was for a thick layer of cirrus cloud that may have threatened the levels of sunshine reaching our solar cells. As is often the case the actual weather conditions were slightly better than forecast and the cloud had shifted a little south-eastwards which meant that fortunately for us the aeroplane flew below the cloud during the evening when we did not need the sun.
We also had a minor diversion to avoid air traffic restricted areas in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The winds are also smiling for us as the surface wind is blowing straight down the runway 120 at Dubai which means that we do not have to fly a holding pattern to wait for the wind strength to drop after dusk. So all in all a very satisfactory result, especially as we did it whilst the boss is flying in the simulator and cannot claim the credit! He is still doing pretty well though, and I’ll update that news shortly.
Alien or robot? - 2008-05-15 10:46 (am)
Well, now we are beginning to gang up on our CEO. Surely he cannot keep up this standard of flying for much longer? Unless of course some opinions are correct and he is really an alien........ I doubt this as I know he has a human side. His wife Yasemin was here at mission control until yesterday evening when their daughter Ela arrived. So it seems that his family have to take shifts in looking after him?
There was a potential family argument this morning when Ela finally realised that her father was actually going to get to play on a computer for 25 hours when throughout her childhood she has never been allowed to play on one for more than 2 hours at a time! Whilst waiting for some technical results to report I have been reviewing the comments.
Thank you for sending them in, it is reassuring to hear that it is not simply those involved with the project who feel inspired by it. There were just a couple of questions that I promised to answer, so I can do them here.Pia asked where we were going. Well we are not really going anywhere at the moment. We plan to remain south of the Jura and fly within approximately 80 kilometres of Payerne. At this stage we need to simply carry out flight exercises for testing purposes in an area of fine weather with several airfields around to which we can do practice emergency diversions from various altitudes.
Denise asked how Bertrand could manage to sleep for just 5 minutes. The maximum sleep period we are allowing the pilots is 20 minutes, so that they do not descend into the deeper stage of sleep from which it is difficult to wake and takes time for alertness levels to return to normal. Bertrands 5 minute period was just at a point when we woke him after just 5 minutes to simulate an emergency condition.
Precision flying - 2008-05-15 09:56 (am)
On the assumption that Andre will be at his best early on in the flight, we have had a pretty intense time in running through many of our flight test procedures. His flying is so incredibly precise that we are beginning to suspect that he has put just as many hours into computer games as he has accumulated on fast jets, historic aircraft and helicopters. In fact one can hear the team members audibly groan now as he gets each procedure perfectly correct. Still, there is a long time to go and I reckon we can come up with a scheme to fix that! We hope to demonstrate that the more precise we can keep the flying procedures, the more frugal the aeroplane will be on it’s power consumption. During daylight hours it is not so important as long as the sun is shining on our wings, which is why our meteorologists Luc and David are a vital part of the team. But at night, this precision could mean the difference between remaining airborne at daybreak or having to put down on land or sea.
Into the wide blue yonder - 2008-05-15 06:21 (am)
The Solar Impulse callsign HB-SIA has successfully lifted off from Payerne at 0720 – virtually on time if you see what I mean. The batteries are fully charged and provided approximately 75% of takeoff power as the sun will not exert its full effect on the solar cells until around 0845. This time difference allows us to carefully monitor our computer model in terms of assessing increasing power available from the sun as it rises in the sky in relation to the photovoltaic top surface of the wing. In order to prove this model Andre has to be incredibly accurate with the aircraft speed keeping it initially to 25 knots plus or minus 0.5 of a single knot.
Deja vu - 2008-05-15 05:03 (am)
Good morning once again from Solar Impulse mission control. Today it is Andre’s turn to endure 25 hours of pure flying pleasure interrupted by the insensitive attempts to make his life more difficult by the simulator instructors with similar tests to those which were applied to Bertrand. From the blog point of view, because Andre is the man who signs the cheques, I will be on my best behaviour. Maybe.
Takeoff is scheduled once again for 0720 hrs local time from runway 23 at Payerne. The pre-flight checklists are in progress and Andre is being fitted with all the gadgets to monitor just about any bodily function you care to name – except that! With improved control of the monitoring webcams we hope to spare you the sight of the pilot dressing which managed to slip in by mistake (honest) prior to Bertrand’s flight. The team is standing by like a coiled spring and the aeroplane seems anxious once again to dance into the sky. Lets go!
Debriefing - 2008-05-14 04:18 (pm)
De briefing lasted a couple of hours and I’m pleased to report that nobody has been fired.
KC – thank you for your kind comments, but you need to write in again because the team is convinced that you are my mother!
The trouble with mid-project debriefings is that now we have a huge amount of work to do before tomorrows flight. Parameters are being modified, ergonomic changes made to the cockpit, tiny tweaks to the simulator software and Bertrand has eaten most of the food stock in the fridge.
With nothing more intelligent to tell you, I thank you all for your interest and support, urge you to visit us again tomorrow and I will now plead with the boss to allow me to go to bed.
Mid point. - 2008-05-14 12:19 (pm)
You might think that we have all been given the day off to recover from Bertrand's flight; no such luck I'm afraid. The debrief starts in one hour and unfortunately it is not a virtual one. It has taken these few hours since the successful flight conclusion to collate all the data and so you will understand that there has been precious little good information to include in our blog.
We suspect that André's workload will be very high during his flight tomorrow with lots of theories to test to conclude if various suggestions for improvement are practical or whether they remain simply theories; with so many clever people working on this project, we have rather a lot of these as you might imagine. Thank you to those who contributed with comments. We promise that the questions posed will be answered, probably by incorporating them soon as a Q&A section on the site.
It seems appropriate to give the last word on this particular blog to Bertrand: "Tell everybody that I thought I would be flying a simulator, but due to the quality of the equipment and professionalism of the team I really felt as if I was flying the real aeroplane", he said. How can he be so smooth, I ask myself?; I know I promised him the last word, but it is my blog after all!
Brian.
Part one complete - 2008-05-14 06:50 (am)
Bertrand landed successfully at 0843 without breaking anything! A warm welcome was waiting for him at the simulator door, although we still have no volunteers to massage his bottom!
Landing - 2008-05-14 06:25 (am)
The peace of the night time mission control has been shattered by the arrival of the day shift and the sound of computers firing up. Now is the time when the meteorological forecasts are updated from the massive computers in the weather centres of the USA and Europe. The air traffic controllers check on progress of the other simulation working quietly in the background which is that of one of the legs of the planned round the world flight. Bertrand continues to fly the aeroplane unaware that the medical team are studying the readouts of his stress and alertness levels throughout the night together with a trace of the electrocardiogram which has been monitoring his heart and blood oxygen levels. His quiz scores are being analysed and correlated with all the other data which has been collected throughout the hours of darkness. Once he has landed in around forty minutes time we will be planning a debrief session to see how we can improve or modify our systems to test once again when Andre takes to the skies tomorrow for another 25 hour marathon. Those of you who are more alert than myself will have noticed that Bertrand is actually going to fly for a little more than 25 hours. This is because we plan to land the aeroplane once we have one hundred percent solar power which will occur when the sun has reached a critical angle in relation to the aircraft at 0845hrs. It is once we have confirmed this recharging power that we can declare the mission a success – and of course once Bertrand has landed the aeroplane without breaking it! But we all know that he can do that, don’t we?
A beautiful sunrise - 2008-05-14 04:32 (am)
Dawn has broken and Bertrand seems more alert than me, despite my attempts to give him difficult tasks including mental arithmetic tests, for example multiply 88 by 17 and a practice diversion and landing at Ecuvillens. In fact for the first time he achieved one hundred percent success in the arithmetic exercise, so he is more cognicent now than he was just after takeoff. I always knew there was something strange about this guy! He is feeling well except for an uncomfortable bottom which will probably need a massage when he emerges from the cockpit in a couple of hours time. As yet we have no volunteers to perform this kindness and his wife will not arrive here until later in the week, so it looks as though he is simply going to have to suffer. The aeroplane has performed very well and Bertrand has developed a good feel for the simulator with his last practice landing just about perfect. With now just under two hours to go before his final landing the training mission has already proved to be invaluable experience in preparation for the real thing.
Moonlight over Payerne - 2008-05-14 02:07 (am)
Its four in the morning (as the song goes) and all is very quiet in mission control. Bertrand has taken four sleep periods of twenty minutes each. It is remarkable how he manages to become fully alert as soon as I wake him up with a call on the radio. Particularly as I remember that on the balloon he could easily sleep for nine hours at one time. I also remember thinking that if sleeping ever became an Olympic sport then he would surely be a gold medallist! It brings back good memories of when we were alone together in the middle of the night in the balloon capsule enjoying a great adventure, and here in the Solar Impulse control centre we are once again in a similar situation – history repeating itself for a short moment. He has just had some breakfast of sweet rice pudding and is in good spirits. The simulator night scenery is fantastic in its detail, and watching Bertrands face on the monitor screen, I see him smile sometimes when he recognises a feature or a highway which obviously stirs a memory for him.
First night - 2008-05-13 09:23 (pm)
It is now night here and most of the team members have gone to rest. Bertrand is still in his cockpit experiencing a beautifully starry sky. He is in good spirits and does not appear to be tired, although he confessed he would soon take a short nap of 20 minutes! The atmosphere here is pretty surreal: the whole mission area is dark except from a few desk lights and the blue of the beamer that is projected on a wall. We are at the second day of this mission and don't feel the fatigue yet as the team spirit is very strong. We would like to inform you, regarding the power failure, that everything is running smoothly again so that you don't need to be worried about Bertrand. We wish you all a good night and will keep you posted.
Too much power - 2008-05-13 03:30 (pm)
Brian has now left the control center for a rest before resuming duty after midnight. Maybe on his way he kicked the electric socket because we have experienced a cockpit power failure. We believe that the real reason is because we exceeded the maximum power output available to the simulator. As a consequence, it shut down the entire simulator system. We are in the process of rebooting all the computers and we hope to be back in operation soon. Fortunately the pilot is safe and waiting for the lights to come back on!
Light relief - 2008-05-13 01:30 (pm)
Bertrand has finished his lunch of (delicious) sandwiches – he asked me to describe them as delicious because they were made by his daughters! It sounds mundane, but when you consider that the aeroplane is flying at almost 30,000ft and Bertrand is having to wear an oxygen mask, then you can appreciate the difficulty of eating lunch. The mask is removed for just enough time to allow a large bite to be taken. The aeroplane, and for that matter the pilot also, is behaving impeccably which makes finding a subject for the blog rather difficult. I thought therefore that you might enjoy what followed lunch when Bertrand wanted to relieve himself. In order to protect his modesty we must ensure that the webcam is diverted so that he is not caught on camera, also we must isolate all the cameras in the simulator itself to ensure that an embarrassing piece of film does not find its way to UTube. Finally we must ensure that the door to the simulator is guarded so that a rogue journalist does not find his way in there. I’m sure that Hollywood does not have these problems with their stars! Anyway, I am pleased to report that he is once again comfortable and continuing to fly the aeroplane between Grenchen and Yverdon whilst our control team give him tasks to achieve. Bertrand has carried out three practice landings at Payerne with varying amounts of cross-winds and completed each of them safely and onto the runway. Although I’m sure that he will not mind me telling you that on his first landing he managed to remove one of the landing lights. No doubt the Payerne authorities will send him a virtual invoice
maths test - 2008-05-13 08:54 (am)
Having just finished a session in the instructor’s seat, I’m beginning to feel sorry for my friend in the pilot’s seat. We put him through a series of exercises for mental agility including simple (?) arithmetic problems like 17 x 123 – it had me scratching my head and reaching for a calculator! It was very interesting to see his stress levels increasing and note his perception of rising body temperature. As expected he did pretty well at this stage. Bertrand is now completely absorbed in the flight and has the feeling that he is actually in a real aeroplane. The simulator scenery is very realistic which helps to engender this sense of reality. He ate a snack of something which looked pretty disgusting but apparently tasted quite good. I had to hastily retract my remarks about the food when he told me it had been prepared by his wife Michele! Anyway it is a mixture of creamed rice and other low residue but high calorie ingredients – for obvious reasons. From the technical point of view the flight is progressing well with plenty of observations for improvements which can be made to reduce pilot workload, streamline the checklists and improve the backup team performance, which is after all, what we are here for.
first flight exercise - 2008-05-13 07:48 (am)
Bertrand has now been in the seat for two hours and we are looking carefully at the ergonomic design of cockpit and his comfort levels. So far his only criticism is that he needs to input full rudder deflection to achieve a balanced turn. This will involve a simulator adjustment rather than a potential design flaw in the aircraft, so the engineers currently still have a smile on their faces. His first flight exercise is to make gentle timed turns to the right then left for one minute each so that he should end up on the same heading on which he started. Pretty basic stuff in a Cessna maybe, but in Solar Impulse the initial turns need to be an accurate two degree bank angle, and then repeated for five degrees - try that in a Cessna! The speed throughout the exercise needs to be kept within plus or minus 2 knots from standard and we allow a height deviation of up to 100ft – not as strict as I would like, but he is a friend! I don’t think he will have too much trouble with this but it might be a little more entertaining when he repeats it at midnight having been woken up from a five minute sleep period.
Airborne - 2008-05-13 06:27 (am)
Airborne – and only seven minutes late. Not the normal Swiss precision regarding timing I know, but we had a radio communications problem immediately prior to takeoff which took a few minutes to correct. So all is well now and Bertrand is flying adjacent to the lake of Neuchatel. Whilst our meteorologist Luc Trullemans is constantly monitoring the current weather conditions, I should explain that we have loaded the simulator with the actual weather conditions of one week ago which were ideal with a beautifully stable air mass. So for those of you who might accuse us of cheating please understand that in a real flight scenario we will programme the takeoff for when the weather conditions are perfect, whereas the date of the simulation had to be fixed for this week. The weather this morning is fine but the atmosphere is a little unstable which could lead to unacceptable amounts of turbulence for our delicate aeroplane. Bertrand is coping well with the flying controls, so we will soon give him some flight exercises to test his skill and then repeat these again when he is much more tired.
Take-off imminent - 2008-05-13 05:24 (am)
Good morning We are making final preparations for the first takeoff scheduled for 0720 and would like to apologise to our webcam viewers who may have been distressed by seeing Bertrand in a state of undress whilst strapping monitoring equipment to his body. We assure you that this equipment is necessary and not simply to make him as uncomfortable as possible. We have a medical team monitoring his vital signs and stress levels via sensors strapped to his upper body. On top of this he will wear a special vest fitted with vibrating alarm units which is linked to the aircraft systems to warn the pilot when the flight characteristics depart from the safe parameters. These alarms can also be triggered by the simulator instructors (myself and the flight director, Raymond), so even if the pilots are succeeding in flying this remarkable simulator correctly, we have the ability to cause major discomforts for them (and Bertrand thought I was one of his best friends!!). So, we are just minutes away and I must turn my attention to the exciting action about to start.
About the HB-SIA - 2008-05-12 09:41 (pm)
The HB-SIA is the prototype airplane that is actually beeing built in Duebendorf and that is used in the flight simulator. Two airplanes will be built, the HB-SIA and the HB-SIB. The aim of the prototype is not fly around the world as this is meant to be done by the HB-SIB. The HB-SIA will do the first 36-hour flight ever in a manned solar airplane. Its wingspan will be 61 meters (as much as an Airbus A340) and its weight, including the pilot, will be 1500 kg! Weight is indeed a very big constraint. For instance, one can see a big sign in the middle of the workshop that says: "ALWAYS WEIGH YOUR PARTS!". This shows, as an example, how detailed and how complex it is to build such an airplane respecting all the requirements. André Borschberg, Solar Impulse's CEO even ads: "Anything that doesn't break is potentially too heavy".
The aims of the HB-SIA are various. They go from validating computer simulations, as it is done during this Virtual Flight week, to demonstrate the feasibility of flying in it in a day-night-day cycle.
The whole mission team as well as the engineering team all really hope that this simulation will allow to endorse the work made up to now in order the start the test flight next year.
Bertrand is now deeply sleeping as he has to wake up very early tomorrow morning to start his 25-hour mission at 7:00 CET.
Welcome - 2008-05-12 05:39 (pm)
Welcome to the Solar Impulse Virtual Flight 2008. I will be with you until next Friday keeping you up to date with both the mission status and the trials and tribulations taking place in the mission control headquarters here at the HB-SIA construction hall in Duebendorf, Switzerland.
Take-off for the first of the two 25-hour nonstop flights will take place tomorrow morning at 07:00 CET from Payerne . Bertrand Piccard will pilot from the cockpit mockup. André Borschberg will take over for the second flight planned for Thursday morning.
During this long period of duty, the pilots will be testing their own physical and mental stamina when faced with a variety of scenarios designed to stretch both pilots and airplane to the limit of their abilities. The mission team will put into practice all of the lessons learned from the 2007 Virtual Flight in order to be ready for next year's prototype test flights.
Watch this space!
Brian Jones, Mission Control
The mission team is back! - 2008-05-12 11:28 (am)
After one year, the mission team is back for another Virtual Flight! We are madly preparing the simulation area in order to be ready to take off on May 13, early Tuesday morning CET.
The flight simulator developed this year is indeed really amazing as it allows the pilots to fly in 3D sitting in a cockpit mockup. We are all looking forward to this new one-week long adventure!
