We got the press release the other day about a solar-powered blimp, built in part by French high school students, making the trip across the English Channel. This was just about the time we were observing the 40th anniversary of people walking on the moon, some of us replaying the pinch-me awe that drew indelible tracks in our brain matter.
We weren't quite sure what to think about the blimp -- until colleague Jeff Ryser put one point of view in a nutshell: "We grew up with men walking on the moon. Now our kids are flying blimps across the English Channel." Somehow, he suggested, this wasn't what we had in mind back then.
To be fair (and Jeff is), blimp travel isn't the point of the channel crossing. It is really to demonstrate the possible, even though Lockheed Martin and others are making solar blimps for military surveillance use, and NASA, with industry, has made some fabulous leaps on the space station. But the ultimate for us groundlings will be battery and solar panel-powered planes -- not something we have paid attention to. Our loss.
Electric companies already count airports among major power users, and it seems that someday maybe not only cars will be plugging in, but airplanes will too. Solar could fuel some power needs, while batteries provide the main flying juice. No small load, one would think.
Jet fuel a thing of the past? No time soon, but it would feel better someday to have gone from people walking on the moon to people moving around this planet in quiet, sleek machines, without fossil fuel. Environmentalists and diplomats will be able to speed to all their meetings about carbon footprints without guilt about their carbon footprints.
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