Bertrand Piccard's Big Hydrogen Adventure – hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft

Few explorers have reached the heights, literally and figuratively, that Bertrand Piccard has. He is the quintessential modern explorer, for whom every big mission has a purpose, which generally boils down to environmental and climate-change awareness. In 1999, he was the first person to circumnavigate the globe nonstop in a balloon, calledBreitling Orbiter 3. Then he and André Borschberg, a Swiss entrepreneur and pilot, were the first to fly around the world, in stages, in a solar airplane called Solar Impulse. Now he’s in the midst of what looks like his most technologically ambitious mission yet: to fly around the planet in a green-hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft. Planned for 2028, this trip would be the first nonstop zero-emission circumnavigation in human history. It’s easy to see how this is the logical next step in Piccard’s remarkable career. And yet there was nothing straightforward about the early stages of the journey that got him here. The path to becoming one of the world’s ... Read full article.