Planned Second Aircraft (HB-SIB)
Construction of the second Solar Impulse aircraft, carrying the Swiss registration HB-SIB, started in 2011. It will feature a larger, pressurized cockpit and advanced avionics to allow for transcontinental and trans-oceanic flights. Supplemental oxygen and various other environmental support systems will allow the pilot to cruise at an altitude of 12,000 metres (39,000 ft).
The wingspan of HB-SIB will be 80.0 m (262.5 ft), slightly wider than an Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger airliner, but unlike the 500-ton A380, the carbon-fibre Solar Impulse will weigh little more than an average automobile.
Completion was planned for 2013, with a circumnavigation of the globe in 20–25 days in 2014. However, following a structural failure of the main spar during static tests, a more likely date for the circumnavigation is 2015. The flight would circle the world in the northern hemisphere, near the equator. Five stops are planned to allow changes of pilots. Each leg of the flight will last three to four days, limited by the physiology of each pilot. Once improved battery efficiency makes it possible to reduce the aircraft's weight, a two-seater is envisaged to make a non-stop circumnavigation.
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““If little planned is little sinned
But little need the grave distress.
What’s dying but a second wind?
How but in zig-zag wantonness
Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)