Solar Blimp Takes to French Skies

A team of French engineers is preparing a test flight of a helium blimp they’ve wrapped in flexible solar panels. If it goes well, by the end of the summer the team plans to cross the English Channel in an airship they say allows unlimited flight with zero emissions.

Projet Sol’R, led by INSA Lyon and ESSEC Business School, made the blimp’s frame from aluminum frame and covered it in an outer wrap made from nylon and polyethylene. The blimp is 22 meters (72 feet) long and it is powered by semi-flexible solar cells are capable of generating 2.4 kilowatts.
“Right now we use a surprisingly small motor which powers two big red propellers,” Felix Hildenbrand, one of the people involved in the project, told Wired.com. The propellers can push the blimp, which is 5.5 meters or about 18 feet in diameter, along at as much as 25 mph.

“All the work was done by students of engineering schools or technical high schools,” Hildenbrand said. “We want to cross the channel with this prototype by the end of the summer.” At the Strait of Dover, it should take a little less than an hour.

Wired