In Pictures: Solar-Powered Plane Completes Epic Transcontinental Flight

WIRED

Bertrand Piccard has grown accustomed to the Solar Impulse skeptics. He’s used to people talking about its cruising speed of just 30 mph while dismissing the fact that his aircraft has but one seat and is powered solely by the sun.

But Piccard, who with André Borschberg founded Solar Impulse and flew the airplane their team built across the United States, says such people miss the point.

“When you are a pioneer, you have a lot of skeptical people who will laugh at you,” he said during a Google Hangout on Saturday. “These people are just people who are prisoners of their certitudes. They’re prisoners of their old ways of thinking.”