Worlds first Solar flight from Switzerland to Belgium underway

Posted by – May 13, 2011

Watch the live video now here: http://www.solarimpulse.com

The flight should be 12 hours, 438 kilometers from Payerne Switzerland to Brussels Belgium. This is the worlds first attempt to make an international flight using a 100% solar powered airplane.

You can follow the flight live with video and metrics with the Solar Impulse app on Android Google Marketplace and Apple Appstore.

I’d like to know this from an aeronautical expert:

Could we build an electric airplane, no solar, just big batteries, how many people can be transported, how far and how fast? What if the range of an electric jumbo jet with 100 passengers was only 2 hours, that’s enough for half of all the short range gasoline powered flights.