Solar Powered Plane Takes Flight

A special podcast with André Borschberg, pilot of the world’s first completely solar-powered airplane. We caught up with Borschberg about 12,000 feet up as he was making his way from Switzerland to Brussels.

Tech Week in Review

The first of our newly minted “Global Tech: Week in Review” posts, offering links to the top stories from the past week. We’ll post it every Friday. This week, we take flight with the world’s first completely solar-powered aircraft!

Tech Podcast: Solar powered plane soars

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The Solar Impulse project, based in Switzerland, aims to create a solar-powered airplane that can one day circumnavigate the globe without using a single drop of conventional fuel. They got one step closer this week, after a successful 26 hour test flight. Find out how the solar cells, and the pilot, held up during the night. We’ve also got stories on recent developments regarding Internet censorship in China, and on an early version of the radio that used…the telephone. (Photo: Matth1)

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Geo answer

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A Swiss company called Solar Impulse is in the very early stages of mounting what it hopes will be the first solar-powered flight around the world. For today’s Geo Quiz, we asked just how long a flight that would be if the flight plan circled the earth at the equator. The answer is 24,901 miles…or approximately 25,000 miles.

Castle Building Gets Medieval, Bertrand Piccard, and GPS Atari Art

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On this week’s show, castle builders in France use medieval technologies and techniques to build a castle…from scratch. Also, we have an interview with Bertrand Piccard, who wants to one day fly a solar-powered plane, non-stop, around the world. And we end with one podcast listener’s amazing art project. He and his buddies use GPS and their bikes to make geo-spatial art!

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