This morning, at about 4 a.m., the Swiss-created solar plane Solar Impulse took off from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. (60 Minutes had a report all about the plane and the team behind it last December.) It’s headed for St. Louis, where it should arrive tonight. That’s the third leg in an attempt to complete a cross-country trip of America.
You can follow the progress and hear from pilot Bertrand Piccard live on the Solar Impulse website. Just a bit ago, I heard Piccard remark upon the fact that they chose to leave today because it was a perfect weather window for the journey, since there were storms in the way yesterday and there are expected to be more along the route tomorrow. As of this writing, the plane is a little past Tulsa. You can see video of the plane’s takeoff from DFW above.
Solar Impulse arrived at DFW on May 23. A couple of videos, on this page, show how our torrential storms led to some flooding of the hangar in which they were storing the plane. “When it rains here, it pours,” says the team’s “journalist” in one of the videos. They seemed to have left with the impression that it’s as rainy here as in Seattle.
