Solar Gadgets Airplane
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 |After electricity was discovered, people’s lives, I mean the quality of life improved a lot. All the hard work that people used to do was now replaced by machines and they also allowed a bigger productivity, so the best results. The first source of energy was steam and this was obtained with the help of coal. Little by little, in time, people discovered more sources of energy like coal, natural gas, oil, water energy and even nuclear energy more recently.
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The only problem is that all of them (maybe except water energy) cause pollution, so there are bad consequences on the environment, which is a great concern nowadays with the greenhouse effect and the global warming and all. The best example is the disaster caused by the accident in the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Russia, in 1986 that affected the whole neighouring area and caused thousands of hundreds of deaths because for cancer for a period of twenty years.
That is why they have started looking for alternative energy sources, “clean” ones and environmental friendly that will not affect the quality of the water, soil, air around. One of these sources of energy is solar energy, that is the warmth of the sun. The Sun is the protector of life on Earth, as without it all life forms would die, but we can also use the huge amounts of energy sent every minute by the Sun on Earth for obtaining the nergy we need for many purposes.
This is possible with the help of some huge solar panels that capture this solar energy and turn it into electricity, thus being able to supply a house with electric light or to keep an electric engine running and thus allowing different devices to work properly.
An innovative use of solar energy is to build <strong>a solar airplane gadget</strong>. But it’s not only a project or a science fiction story, it’s real and a couple of guys have succeeded doing it. Actually, when looking for this information I found two such prototypes of solar airplane gadgets that looked really impressive.
The first one is called the Solar Impulse and is said to be totally solar dependent. Its founder, Bertrand Piccard, worked for seven years until he succeeded finishing his project. This airplane has a huge amplitude of its wings in order to be able to house the 12,000 solar cells that will provide the necessary energy to keep the device in the air at 4,000 feet altitude. There was a test flight that was planned for 2009, but it actually took place in Switzerland in February 2010.
The aircraft stayed in the air for 87 minutes and flew with a speed of 44 miles per hour, which is pretty slow for a normal airplane, but it’a amazing for a vehicle that was able to stay up in the air only by using solar power. The team that built it also plan to have a round the world flight soon, in 2012.<a href=”http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/solar-airplane-completes-maiden-voyage/” target=”_blank”>The Solar Impulse</a> will be carefully monitored by a team on land that will keep an eye on weather in order to act immediately if there is no sun in the sky in certain days. <a href=”http://thecoolgadgets.com/world-first-solar-powered-plane-initial-flight-test-on-february-2010/” target=”_blank”>Here</a> you can find more technical details and photos of this amazing gadget.
The other <strong>solar airplane gadget</strong> is called <a href=”http://www.gadgets.techshankar.com/gadget/sun-seeker-ii-solar-airplane/” target=”_blank”>Sunseeker II</a> and it uses solar energy to supply the necessary power in a small battery that keeps the engine working for 90 minutes even if there is no sun out.
I can’t wait to see these airplanes in mass production when everybody will be able to purchase one. What about you?
