Halfway there

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

Day 2 will soon be over…. André might not agree with me but I’m amazed at how quickly time is passing here! 36 hours already and not a sign of tiredness ;)

Today was punctuated by a whole series of attention tests, interviews, questionnaires, naps and visits.

This morning, the mission team took the opportunity to do some training in motor failures (1 motor then all motors) and emergency landings. As you can guess, André sailed through these exercises with flying colours and with precision! The only explanation: in another life he was a bird…

Every time Raymond Clerc, the flight director, gives him an exercise a little more challenging, André’s face lights up, fatigue disappears as if by magic and his attitude says: Let’s push it to the limit!!

As some will have read on Twitter, André used the toilet for the first time this afternoon… The words that that stay in my mind are: “Needs careful manipulation”. I’ll give you a more detailed explanation tomorrow sometime during the day. He might even give a demonstration albeit a partial one: stay tuned!

With this, it’s goodnight from me… I’m off to recharge my batteries so I can be in good shape for the home stretch tomorrow.

.

 

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Fatigue and Vigilance Management

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

On returning to base this morning, I find André smiling and in his usual upbeat mood! As mentioned by Brian in 2008, I think he’s making up for all those hours of video gaming he didn’t have when he was young! I’m sure there’s a lot of envy there!

After this first night, I welcome the chance of talking about fatigue management, which we are testing here in Dübendorf during this virtual flight.

For the round the world flight, the pilot’s rest strategy will be divided into 2 phases:

For flights over land, the pilot will not sleep, because these flights will be shorter, something like 24 to 36 hours, and he will use relaxation techniques other than sleep. This is what André was doing during the 26 hour Night Flight in 2010.

However, for crossing oceans (the Pacific and the Atlantic), the pilot will organise his sleep in multiple phases; he will take micro-naps of around 20 minutes each only on the parts of the flight that are outside controlled air spaces and only over water.

Here we are training in two types of rest: relaxation and napping (micro-naps). André can sleep for 6 hours in 20 minute periods staggered over a day (24 hrs).

In addition, we are taking advantage of the time André is in the simulator to put him into a sleep deficit situation so that we can assess his degree of vigilance day and night, before and after rest periods.

This will enable us to develop the best flight and rest strategy for each pilot based on their individual aptitudes.

In this exercise, the Solar Impulse team is supported by different partners to produce the best strategy: two laboratories at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) are taking part: the Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) and the Defitech Foundation Chair in Non-invasive Brain-computer Interfacing (CNBI).

The ESL is going to measure the pilot’s heart rate and the CNBI will measure his brain activity. In parallel, the researchers from the EPFL are going to carry out attention and reaction-speed tests at regular intervals, and study his responses to questionnaires.

A team of Hirslanden doctors are monitoring the progress of the simulation and analysing the physiological and medical data gathered in order to measure the quality of the pilot’s rest and also the effects of a long-duration flight.

Here is a video to give you a glimpse of these tests!

 

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Day One

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

The early hours of the day were extremely active: preparing the pilot, the take-off, medical check-ups, visits by journalists and above all familiarising the team with their responsibilities. Everyone paid close attention to each test and intervention since they were being carried out for the first time.

Now at the end of the afternoon the atmosphere is calmer, and everyone is starting to analyse the first results obtained. At an altitude of 8,500 m André wore his oxygen mask, being obliged to fly at this height so that he could get through the night on battery power and the potential energy provided by altitude.

Throughout these 72 hours, efforts will be channelled into the human factor and its limits. In the coming days we will pass on details of things like nutrition, fatigue management and concentration as well as the ergonomics of the cockpit. A real human challenge!

As the end of the first day approaches, part of the team has gone off to rest. It’s difficult to realise that André is going to stay in this black box until Friday, when I for one am glad that I can go and eat and lie down in a real bed! See you tomorrow!

 

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Getting the pilot ready

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

After a final night of peaceful sleep, a large part of the team arrived this morning for the last preparations before takeoff scheduled for 08:00.

André arrived in great form (I think he was the most awake of all the team) and was immediately collared by the different teams.

The preparations began with a dressing session: you’d have thought that, with his red leggings, André was getting ready to go skiing …

The situation took a more serious turn when the doctors appeared: blood sample, urine test and attachment of electrodes (electrocardiogram and encephalogram).

The sheer number of patches surprised us all… and a good thing that his hairdresser wasn’t there to see the styling!

With so little time before departure, the doctor had to continue attaching the electrodes in flight, which certainly won’t be possible in the real situation ;)


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Welcome

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

Welcome to the Solar Impulse Virtual Flight 2012 (#vf2012)! I will be with you until Friday from the construction hall of HB-SIB in Dübendorf. I will be keeping you up to date with the mission status, the flight tests and also the tribulations experienced in the control room. I am also going to try to catch Bertrand and get him to tell us a little about his experience during the week (I’ve already tried to swap his decaf coffee for a double expresso…)

So what does a virtual flight at Solar Impulse consist of?

First there’s a pilot (Dixit Guinea Pig at our briefing), André in this case, who will be installed in a full size cockpit for 72 hours surrounded by 5 giant screens giving a 210 degree view. (I’ll show you photos of it tomorrow). During this long period, André will test his physical and mental endurance in a variety of scenarios designed to push him to the limit of his capabilities.

Then of course there is the mission team, directed by Raymond Clerc, which will assist the pilot throughout the flight. Their aim is to put into practice everything learned from the last flights and of course train themselves for the future missions later this year. The team is also surrounded by several project partners whom we’ll find out more about throughout the week!

We’ve just finished the first briefing of the week and the whole team is on the alert for a takeoff tomorrow at 08:00 (UTC+1)! Stay connected: the adventure is only beginning!

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Virtual flight 2012

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

The year 2012 is beginning to take shape for the Solar Impulse team. Construction of the 2nd airplane, HB-SIB, is moving ahead in parallel with the next flights of the prototype, planned for this spring.

Bertrand’s flights will start again at the beginning of March and are due to last until early May. These training flights will enable him to familiarise himself with the prototype on longer flights (10-18 hours).

After the European flights last year, the team is also getting ready for a new mission abroad this year 2012. The destination hasn’t been decided yet, but stay tuned, we’re going to reveal it soon.

The next event, however, is scheduled for 21 to 24 February, in our facility at Dübendorf in Switzerland. André will be at the controls for a flight simulation of 72 hours (yes, that’s right, 72 hours, or 3 days and 3 nights) in a full-size mock-up of the cockpit of HB-SIB.

Contrary to the virtual flights of 2008 which focused mainly on flying and the mission, this one will allow us to experience the human challenge posed by flights lasting several days at a stretch, and also experiment with the design and configuration of the new cockpit.

You can follow this training exercise on our Blog, our Facebook Page and by Twitter from Monday 20 February onwards.

I hope André and the team get a good rest this weekend so they can put all their energy into this virtual flight! They’ll need it ;)

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Resilient People, Resilient Planet

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Elâ Borschberg

On 6 February at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Micheline Calmy-Rey, former President of the Swiss Confederation, presented the report on sustainable development written by a panel of heads of state at the behest of the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Aware of the very clear message from Solar Impulse in favour of technologies that can reduce our dependency on fossil energy, she had asked Bertrand to speak alongside her.

For him this was an opportunity to bring up the story about an exchange with his meteorologists during his round-the-world balloon trip and which describes so well the question of sustainability and the long-term vision. Very pleased with himself at having found an altitude where the winds were pushing him twice as fast as the team’s calculations had suggested, his advisors replied ironically: “Do you prefer to fly very quickly in the wrong direction or more slowly in the right one?”. “This is the question that governments should be asking now given the speed at which humanity is moving towards massive public debt, the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of our environment.”

As Bertrand pointed out: “Today’s pioneers should not limit themselves to being explorers who walk on the moon or who do trips round the world; they should be heads of state resolved to meet the even more ambitious challenge of improving the quality of life on this planet.”

The report ends with a list of practical recommendations for governments and international institutions, such as the need to remove the many subsidies still given to fossil energy and to include the environmental costs in the prices of all products. “Lastly an official stance that a legal framework is essential to change certain types of behaviour”, say Bertrand and André happy to have included this subject in their Energy Charter last year.

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News on the construction of HB-SIB

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Bertrand Cardis

Now that we have completed the “Rivages” project of building Bernard Stamm’s new 60 foot monocoque, better known by the name of “Cheminées poujoulat”, which is due to take part in the forthcoming Vendée Globe 2012, we move on at the beginning of July to our next project, building the S2, code name for the new Solar Impulse airplane.

Once again we go from boat to airplane, but with our expertise in the use of composite materials as the common factor.

Even before the first flights of HB-SIA, our team at Decision SA were thinking about innovations that could be implemented in the new plane. We reached the stage of working on the lightest carbon fibres weighing only 90 g/m2 (by comparison the sheets of paper we all use daily weigh 80 g/m2) and we wanted to find solutions that we could put to the Solar Impulse design team to make the plane even lighter wherever possible.

The way forward came by taking recent developments in yacht sails by the company Createx of Cossonay and combining them with a new technology called TPT, or Thin Ply Technology. With this technology, we succeeded in laying down on our vacuum tables complex multiple layers of 25 g/m2, plotted by a robot guaranteeing absolute precision in the angles and positioning of the fibres. Incidentally, the CNT (Carbon Nano Tube) included in the new epoxy resin was developed and supplied by Bayer, one of the main sponsors of Solar Impulse.

To validate this new process we worked all through spring and, thanks to the intensive and productive collaboration among all those involved (the Solar Impulse Design Team, Createx SA, Empa and Decision SA), we came to the conclusion that this highly innovative process should be used in building the S2.

So here we are at the end of the year, with all the tools for manufacturing the wing spar completed, and in the process of making the braces for the spar which, when assembled, will be more than 70 m long.

The initial stages of this construction epitomise the mindset of those driving this marvellous project forward: a constant effort to find innovative solutions, to establish their reliability and then to implement them.

Hence the pleasure we all have at Decison SA in building the structures of this extraordinary airplane.

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News on the Energy Charter

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Elâ Borschberg

On 26 September last, Solar Impulse and swisscleantech joined forces to write the Energy Charter which was put to all candidates seeking election to the Swiss Parliament.

More than 500 candidates (or 15% of those seeking election) from all parties signed it, and in doing so committed themselves if elected to voting for measures aimed at promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy.

After the elections it turned out that 30% of those elected had signed the Energy Charter. From this we can draw the conclusion that candidates who signed it had twice as much chance of being elected :) . It also suggests that these questions of renewable energy are central among voters’ concerns!

Today, the action continues since many other members of parliament who have studied the issue have now told us that they want to sign the Charter. This approach encourages politicians to treat energy issues on a non-party basis. By signing it, they undertake personally to vote for measures seeking to achieve clearly defined aims:

  • On energy saving: to introduce a legal framework that allows Switzerland to cut its fossil fuel consumption by at least 40% by 2034 and 70% by 2050
  • On renewable energy: to generate at least 30% of total energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 and 70% by 2050

Our aim is to get more than 50% of MPs to sign the Charter!

The list of signatories is updated regularly. Click here!

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Psychiatrist or Pilot?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Bertrand Piccard

On November 28th 2003, when we launched the Solar Impulse project, André had never given a lecture and I did not have a pilot’s licence.

Eight years later, in the same week, André received his first standing ovation at the end of a lecture for Dassault in Las Vegas, and I was doing my first night landings with Solar Impulse in Payerne.

Eight years of synergy, symbiosis and friendship. Happy Birthday Solar Impulse!

First press conference, EPFL 2003

First press conference, EPFL 2003

 

 

 

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