Solar Impulse No-Fuel Plane Flies Across America

An experimental, solar-powered plane that earned headlines and fans in Europe is headed for the United States.

Solar Impulse, created by Swiss inventors Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg , will fly coast-to-coast, during its "Across America" tour that lifts off in May, says a report in the Huffington Post.

The craft, which has the wing span of a commercial plane but weights about the same as a family car, is powered by about 12,000 photovoltaic cells that blanket the wings and charge its batteries.

The single-seat plane can fly day and night without jet fuel, at a cruising speed of about 40 miles an hour.

About three years ago, Solar Impulse flew 26 hours non-stop, to prove it could generate enough energy from the sun during the day to remain powered at night to demonstrate that the aircraft could soak up enough sunlight to keep it airborne through the night.

Last year, Solar Impulse flew 1,550 miles from Madrid, Spain, to the Moroccan capital city of Rabat in 20 hours, the plane's first transcontinental voyage.

Before the upcoming American transcontinental trip, Solar Impulse is scheduled for some flight testing in April around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Piccard and Borschberg have told reporters they are planning to fly around the globe in an improved Solar Impulse in about two years.

Piccard --- who hails from a family of high adventurers including his grandfather, Auguste, the first man to take a balloon into the stratosphere --- tells redOrbit he never really thought about creating a zero-fuel plane until the balloon he was piloting during a previous around-the-world endeavor ran out of fuel and crash-landed in the Egyptian desert.

"It was almost a failure due to the dependency on fuel and on that day I made a promise," Piccard said. "I made a promise that the next time I would fly around the world it would be with no fuel at all."

Yet, even though it's Piccard and Borschberg's intent to show fuel-free air travel is possible, they don't necessarily consider solar technology as a viable replacement for replacing gasoline-powered airplanes.

The two mean, instead, say the Solar Impulse project is meant to promote new energy-efficient technologies.