Dotted with thousands of solar cells, the plane with a wingspan greater than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet was the first to fly across the globe on solar energy. During the journey, Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg promoted clean technologies as an alternative energy to power future aircraft.
“We think it’s a real honor that the Solar Impulse team considers Dayton to be a fitting place to display the Solar Impulse 2 and their recognition of us as the birthplace of aviation,” said Timothy Gaffney, a NAHA spokesman.
Gaffney asked that any indiviudal or organization in Dayton interested in bringing the plane to the region contact the National Aviation Heritage Alliance.
NAHA Executive Director Tony Sculimbrene said the organization is keyed in on a $4 million project to acquire the former Wright Airplane Co. factory off West Third Street east of Abbey Avenue in Dayton. “It would be cool to have it here but right now there’s only so much NAHA can do and our focus right now is the factory,” he said.
The plane’s 236-foot long wingspan would not fit in the factory where the Wright brothers assembled airplanes. “One of the big problems with Solar Impulse 2 is it’s a big airplane,” he said. “It’s not going to fit in a small building.”
When Solar Impulse 2 arrived in May for a stop in Dayton, the plane was housed in an inflatable temporary hangar the team set up at Dayton International Airport.
“We would love to see it here, but we don’t have any facilities that could accommodate it,” Gil Turner, the airport’s deputy director, said Friday.
The National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., considered placing the aircraft in its collection.
“The Solar Impulse 2 is a significant aircraft and we considered carefully whether to acquire it,” Russell Lee, chairman of the museum’s aeronautics department said in an email Friday. “Circumstances are unique for every aircraft offered to the museum but in general we consider significance and the condition of the aircraft. The Solar Impulse 2 is significant but unfortunately we do not have room for it.”
The plane flew on a more than 26,000-mile trek starting in March 2015 and ending last July in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the start and finish points of the journey with 17 stops. Piccard and Borschberg took turns flying the solar plane day and night over oceans and continents on its way to and from Dayton and along stops on the globe-trotting route.
“With Solar Impulse, it’s an adventure,” Piccard said in a May interview with this newspaper. “It brings a lot of people together because they like the excitement, the spectacular side of having an airplane fly day and night without fuel around the world. But it’s also important, meaningful in the sense that we show what we can do with clean technologies, with technologies that show the impossible.”
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