A glimpse of a fuel-free future? - Solar flight crosses Pacific

It’s not even a century since John Alcock and Arthur Brown became the first men to fly across the Atlantic. 

They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden in Galway, in June, 1919. In the intervening 97 years, transatlantic flight has become a reality of everyday life, available to anyone who can afford it.

The cost of this great emancipator is not just material. Air transport produces unsustainable levels of greenhouse gases. This threat to climate stability is often the result of the most frivolous use of air miles, an indulgence that may seem at least feckless if not incomprehensible in times to come. That is unless science can find a better balance between the demand for flight and the pollution it causes... and it may just have.