Flying to the edge of space using only solar power

[Music] the goal of this project is to do something amazing with an aircraft it's quite standard aircraft you know it's also for the message that everyone with solar energy with electric aircraft can achieve a nice adventure [Music] i went to iceland to greenland many times in my life and in 2004 i really see the change of the climate in that part of the world the climate change is going so fast already in this part of the world so for me will it what is driving me it's i really want to do something in order to protect our climate if we lose this challenge to protect our climate all of the what we try to do to improve our life on these planets will be completely not useful you know so that's really my my goal for me it's really to do everything i can in order to protect the the climate change rafael damian is an eco explorer and in 2010 sailed around the world in a boat powered by the sun it was the first solar electric boat to do so it was an amazing day to so that we can sail with um just with the power of the sun and also uh afterwards i saw that solar energy it's um today the cleanest energy that you can find in the world it's the cheapest one and the safest one so tell me about your project that involves solar energy and flight our new project is solar stratos and the final goal is to go to the stratosphere powered by the sun [Music] we want to demonstrate that with solar stratos we can do something that is not possible to do with fossil fuel but today the challenge is the next one okay let's try and go to the stratosphere to go higher than a normal aircraft who is working with fossil fuel [Music] oh [Music] the plane has a wingspan of 24 meters and is very lightweight at just 450 kilograms solar cells are placed all along the wings charging a lithium-ion battery that powers the engine [Music] so it's a very nice aircraft i like very much the shape of the aircraft it's like a glider but it is an aircraft with really high uh light performance but is uh we are doing at the take off like an any aircraft just with the power of the engine of the plane and then we can stop the engine and we can fly like a glider for a long time [Music] we launched a project in 2014 but we really start to work on 2015 and now we did this year the first jump ever from an electric aircraft the first ever solar sky dive next year we hope that we will be able to start to go higher and higher and we expect to be in the stratosphere from 2022-2023 [Music] as well as setting a record for being the first manned solar plane to reach the stratosphere they plan to use the plane for scientific purposes with zero emissions the plane can take sensitive atmospheric measurements without contaminating the samples with its own exhaust the aim is to reach an altitude of 80 000 feet and this comes with some technical challenges so this is something that is difficult you have to still be as the lightest as possible but also the plane need to be able to fly at this altitude so this is one of the the challenges of course i will be so high that i will need a space suit powered by solar energy and very light also and this is another challenge and then all the technical challenge like with the battery uh it will be really cold it will the pressure will be very low so we need to manage all of these things so it's a huge technical challenge human challenge and it's what we like we like this project because it's difficult not because it's easy there doesn't seem to be much sun up there when you think of those nasa pictures it all seems quite dark you are in the stratosphere you are very high and the view is beautiful you can see the club of the planet you can almost see the stars during the day you are so close of the space it is really dark actually but we have much more sun than what we have on the surface of the planet you know why because the sun crossed the atmosphere so on the surface of the planet at the sea level we have about one thousand twelve per square meters but when you are in the stratosphere you have one thousand children sixty watt per square meters because the sun doesn't cause the atmosphere so you have about 35 percent of energy more coming from the sun so in the stratosphere the power of the sand is much more high than what we have on the planet [Music] the aim of solar stratus is to show what can be achieved through solar energy with the hope that the aviation industry takes notice and steers away from fossil fuel to more sustainable sources of power i am sure that in 20 or 30 years i hope most of the aircraft will be electric for small aircraft and working with hydrogen for bigger aircraft i think the future will be electric aircraft not solar aircraft but that will be electric aircraft and the roof of the hangar will be full of solar cells and with this the cells are always on the sun and then you can charge a battery of the electric aircraft the goal is to spread this message to the world that with solar energy we can change we can protect our climate you know we are burning every second 300 tons of fossil fuel you know it's huge every second every second so if we want to protect this planet against climate change we need to do everything we can in order to change the spirit of the people and they think still today most of them that we cannot do it without fossil fuel this is not true we can do it we can change we get much more power from the rendezvous energies and what we get from fossil fuel we get a lot of more and that's what we want to demonstrate we want to spread this message this very optimistic message about the power of vulnerable energies thanks for watching don't forget to like comment and subscribe and hit the bell button below for notifications

Channel: RAZOR Science Show

Views: 320,254

Keywords: RAZOR, Razor CGTN, RAZOR Science show, Solar power, SolarStratos, Green aviation, Aviation

Id: rlLVkNTARaI

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020