For Bertrand Piccard, the creator and co-pilot of Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered plane that flew from Abu Dhabi this week to commence its historic circumnavigation of the world, life was predetermined by genes. Nothing but the pursuit of high adventure would do.
He may have been born in the lakeside Swiss city of Lausanne, an area hosting the operations centre of Philip Morris International and the headquarters of Nestlé and the International Olympic Committee, but his family’s string of breathtaking contributions to the exploration of air and sea made it a foregone conclusion his career would follow more exciting routes than tobacco, food production or sports administration.
Piccard has made bold strides towards matching the achievements of his father and grandfather. Solar Impulse 2 is not his first project for rounding the world in unconventional style; he and Brian Jones, an Englishman, made the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon fight on board Breitling Orbiter 3 in 1999.
That was no more than a logical continuation of the Piccard dynasty’s extraordinary trajectory.
His grandfather, Auguste, was a physicist, inventor and explorer who established a series of altitude records as a balloonist. In 1931, Auguste ascended nearly 16,000 metres into the stratosphere to become the first human to witness the curvature of the Earth with his own eyes.
By the mid-1930s, he had worked out that his balloon cockpit could be adapted for deep ocean exploration as a “bathyscaphe”, a self-propelled deep-sea submersible.
Little wonder, his grandson would say later, that Professor Calculus, the half-deaf, absent-minded but utterly brilliant character in the classic Belgian children's cartoon The Adventures of Tintin, was modelled on him. The Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was also inspired by the Piccard phenomenon, naming his spaceship commander Jean-Luc Picard after him or his twin brother Jean, also a celebrated balloonist and inventor – or perhaps after the pair of them.
Auguste’s son, Jacques, upheld the family tradition, becoming a renowned oceanographer and engineer.
He designed submarines that could withstand the most treacherous environments. And with Lieutenant Don Walsh of the United States navy, he undertook a real-life voyage to the bottom of the sea, reaching the deepest part of the world’s oceans, Challenger Deep, nearly 11,000 metres beneath the surface of the western North Pacific, in 1960. It was a hazardous enterprise. An ominous loud crack was heard towards the end of the descent and the vessel’s stay at the seabed was cut short for a hasty retreat when damage was detected on the viewing windows.
Amid all this derring-do and academically empowered curiosity – Jean Piccard’s wife and son were also hugely successful and innovative balloonists – the young Bertrand Piccard was unlikely to regard keeping his feet on the ground as a realistic option.
The life that chose itself for him has brought an awe-inspiring blend of excitement and danger, triumph and uncertainty.
Along the way, there has been disbelief, even ridicule, from aviation conservatives. As Piccard said last week before Solar Impulse 2 took off from Abu Dhabi bound for Muscat on the first leg of his odyssey: "It's not easy to be pioneers. It's not easy to be explorers, because every single hour of your life you meet people who doubt you. But we used all those doubts, all the questions for motivation."
The latest product of that defiantly motivational spirit, Solar Impulse 2, boasts a wingspan of 72 metres, wider than a Boeing 747-8I, but a weight of only 2,300 kilograms, equivalent to an SUV car. Unlike even the grandest of regular aircraft, it can fly for days without stopping. But it's also somewhat slower, reaching speeds of only 50kph to 100kph. The short hop from Abu Dhabi to Muscat took 13 hours.
Piccard is alternating the piloting duties for the 12 legs of the circumnavigation with his chief engineer, André Borschberg, also Swiss and a former fighter pilot.
Borschberg, the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Solar Impulse project, took the controls for the first flight.
Then Piccard climbed into the single-seater aircraft for the second leg, across the Arabian Sea from the Omani capital to Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat.
After a flight of more than 15 hours, without having used a drop of fuel, he tweeted: “It is fantastic to arrive in #India powered by the sun!”
Congratulations from around the world included an enthusiastic message from the former US vice president Al Gore, whose passionate climate-change campaigning has won him the Nobel Peace prize. Gore told his own 2.75 million Twitter followers he was thrilled that Piccard and his plane were making a journey that showed the future could be clean.
Gore and Piccard can afford to treat this as a hope that is more than an environmentalist’s pipe-dream: the Paris-based intergovernmental International Energy Agency reported last year that solar power would be the world’s biggest source of electricity by the middle of this century.
Solar Impulse 2's record-breaking attempt to become the first aircraft of its type to circumnavigate the world is scheduled to take five months, finishing back in Abu Dhabi in late July or early August.
A successful conclusion would crown what has already been a remarkable life of attainment for Piccard.
One of Jacques Piccard’s three children, he celebrated his 57th birthday on March 1. When his father died at 86 in 2008, his tribute summed up the family ethos: “He passed on to me a sense of curiosity, a desire to mistrust dogmas and common assumptions, a belief in free will and confidence in the face of the unknown.”
Piccard had spent much of his early life in Florida, where his father worked for the Grumman aerospace company, the chief contractor for the Apollo project that took men to the moon. On several occasions, he was taken to the US Air Force’s Cape Canaveral base to witness space launches.
At school and in higher education, he was bright and inquisitive. Fascinated by his studies of human behaviour in extreme situations, he graduated in psychiatry from the university of his native Lausanne and became a lecturer and supervisor at the Swiss Medical Society of Hypnosis.
He also mastered psychotherapy – his doctoral thesis, Ordeal, a Learning Experience, brought him a prize from the Lausanne faculty of medicine in 1996.
But flight, in its various forms, was in his blood. While still a young man, he obtained licences to operate balloons and pilot aircraft, including free-flying and motorised gliders. He was the European hang-glider aerobatics champion in 1985.
Awards and decorations have punctuated a life shared between medicine, exploration and sporting competition. He has the French Légion d’Honneur, the Olympic Order and the highest distinctions granted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (International Air Sports Federation), National Geographic Society and Explorers Club. He’s an honorary professor and honorary doctor in science and letters, and holds a Grand Prix from France’s Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences).
Philanthropy is also important to him. He and Jones co-founded Winds of Hope, a foundation that fights the “terrible infectious disease” of noma, and he’s a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations population fund.
Piccard and wife, Michèle, have three children and live near Lausanne.
He argues that Solar Impulse 2 is an endeavour offering the best opportunity for spreading the message of clean energy, saying: "We hope that governments understand that this is the way to fight the problems of climate change."
If the expedition succeeds, the aircraft will be modified to operate as a solar-powered drone, helping Piccard and his co-pilot show the world that climate change is not just a threat but “a chance to develop new technologies, fantastic opportunities to change and create jobs”.
Along with all the other attributes, Piccard is seen as an inspirational public speaker.
There can be few more evocative examples of his power with words than those recalled, on the 10th anniversary of his round-the-world balloon epic, by the Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine of the Washington-based National Air and Space Museum.
In what the publication’s editor, Linda Musser Shiner, likened to a “a creed for balloonists … forever at the mercy of the wind”, he had described passing at low altitude over India and Pakistan, the scents of spices and incense wafting up from the ground.
“We were supposed to be flying fast and high, inside a pressurised cabin, in pursuit of our dream,” he said. “And here we were, flying slow and low in the warm air, going nowhere.
“But it was a magical experience. Having no goal anymore, we felt no stress, and once again I realised how important it is to accept whatever life brings.”
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