When Bertrand Piccard was flying solo at night over the Atlantic in Solar Impulse, he felt hopeful for the future of green energy. Then he came back to Earth. “The worst moment is when you land,” says Piccard. “Having been in science fiction, in the future – like in a fairytale – you land back in the past.”
Back on Earth, Piccard told the audience at WIRED2016, he hears the same old argument: that the tech isn’t ready, that it’s too difficult. But to Piccard, Solar Impulse proves that green technology is already at a stage which could significantly reduce our global emissions. “When we speak about the goals for climate change, it’s quite easy to reach them,” he says. “Today you can divide by two the CO2 emission of the world with these types of technologies.” The problem, he says, isn’t the technology – it’s the mindset. As such, he proposed a few ground rules for entrepreneurs, policy makers – anyone interested in helping to change industries and help save the environment.
1. Find a partner first. “When you have a vision, the first step to do is to find one person who will support you, or one institution,” says Piccard. “Otherwise it will feel lonely.”
2. Announce it publicly straight away. When Piccard formed the early Solar Impulse team he was told they had nothing to announce yet. “I said to everybody, ‘it’s exactly because we have nothing that we have to announce it’,” he explains. “When you are working on something difficult and nobody knows about it, it’s easy to give up. If everyone knows about it, you cannot give up. You are condemned to succeed.”
Read more: Climate change is a huge opportunity: Bertrand Piccard on fairytale flights and Earth's future
3. Find your opposite. “You need to find partners who are the opposite of yourself,” says Piccard. “Andre [Borschberg, Solar Impulse’s co-pilot] is the other part of me and I am the other part of him. We cannot be more different. And this is how we can learn something new. With similar people, you have fun, but there is no conflict. You learn nothing.”
4. Find partners who don’t know it’s impossible. When Solar Impulse was designing the plane, it hit a minor bump. “The structure had to be 10 times lighter, proportionally, than the best glider in the world,” says Piccard. The aeronautics industry told them it couldn’t be done. “We needed to find somebody that did not know it was impossible. So we found a shipyard.” Disruptive innovation, he says, doesn’t come from inside industries. “It was not the people selling candles who invented the lightbulb. Even the best electric car does not come from the car industry.”
5. Forget everything you know. Ignore the experts. “If you want innovation, you have to get out of the system. You have to get out of what you have learned. Because what you have learned is a handicap.”
6. Think like a balloonist. “Ballooning is a nice metaphor for innovation and creativity. When ballooning, you are pushed by the winds,” says Piccard. “If you want to go left or right, you have to go up or down. We have to realise that we are a prisoner of the winds of life.” This, he says, is how to overcome challenges – whether finding funding, or design decisions. “We have to change altitude, to find other influences, other strategies, other mindsets.”
7. Don’t teach children what has been done; teach them what hasn’t. “We need to teach our children all the things that have not yet been explored and understood. What is still to be discovered? What is still to be understood? This is the interest for the explorer, for the adventurer, for the entrepreneur, even for the artist.”
8. Every crisis is an adventure. ”The pioneer is not the one who is always successful,” says Piccard. “The pioneer is the one who is trying, who is not afraid of failing.” Solar Impulse took nearly a decade to come to fruition. Its true goal – to show the world the possibility of solar power right now, not in the future – is still ahead.
It’s not easy, but it’s always interesting. Every hiccup is just a bump on the way. One doesn’t balloon around the world, or invent a circumnavigating solar plane, without facing down a few terminal-seeming shocks on the way. His advice? See every bump, every crisis, as another step on the journey, as a challenge to be faced down. Imagine you’re over the Atlantic in the middle of the night, with only solar-powered batteries holding you thousands of feet above the waves. The only way is forward. “Then you are an explorer,” he says. “Then you are free.”
Earlier this year, Piccard took WIRED on an exclusive tour of the Solar Impulse cockpit during the Atlantic leg of the flight. The footage was captured on Piccard's own camera as he made the 70-hour journey across the ocean.
The tiny cockpit – which measures just 40.9 square feet – has room for instruments, a small amount of food and a reclining chair. Pilots can have a daily food allowance of 2.4kg and 2.5 litres of water.
During the footage, Piccard takes an incredible selfie of him and his giant plane. He shows off the plane's seemingly complex controls, including the switches and generators that convert the solar energy. He reclines in his seat to turn it into a bed, and films inside his modest food supplies. The pilots are only able to sleep for 20 minutes at a time, and alarms make sure they don't doze for longer.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
