Solar-powered plane aims to fly around the world

The following script is from "Around the World in 20 Days" which aired on Dec. 2, 2012. Bob Simon is the correspondent. Tom Anderson, producer.

In 1903, the Wright brothers became the first men to fly. Twenty-four years later, Charles Lindbergh became the first to fly over the Atlantic. Coming soon...another possible breakthrough. Two Swiss gentlemen have built a plane which they hope to fly across the United States next spring and then around the world without burning an ounce of fuel.

The plane is called Solar Impulse and it's powered entirely by the sun. It is not the first solar airplane, but it is the first that can fly at night. Thousands of solar cells on its wings transmit enough energy to batteries to keep it in the sky from sunset to sunrise. Solar Impulse has already flown more than 2,500 miles from Switzerland to North Africa and back. The goal: to make it around the world in 20 days and 20 nights.

["Solar Impulse you are cleared to proceed. Have a good flight."]

It looks like it's flown straight out of Jules Verne. It's so light it weighs less than an SUV and needs only 165 yards of runway to take off compared to over a mile for a commercial jet. It has unnaturally long wings. Rather than fly, the plane seems to glide, like a giant dragonfly.

The plane was created by Bertrand Piccard and his business partner, Andre Borschberg and if there ever was an odd couple, you're looking at them. Andre is a pilot and an engineer but never worked on building an airplane. Until six years ago, Bertrand didn't even know how to fly one. He's a psychiatrist, an expert in hypnosis, and one of the most intense human beings we've ever met.

Bob Simon: We saw the plane take off and land last night. Never seen anything like it.

Bertrand Piccard: An airplane like this doesn't exist anywhere else.

Bob Simon: And very recently, it existed nowhere but in your imagination.

Bertrand Piccard: Yeah, that's true.

If Piccard was the dreamer, he relied on his partner Borschberg to be the nuts and bolts guy. Piccard knew he wanted to build something that could fly without using fossil fuels. That was the goal. But he couldn't explain -- and didn't even know -- what that something was going to be.

Andre Borschberg: Was this going to be an airplane? Was this going to be an air ship? Was this going to be a mixture of these solutions, so lighter than air, or something flying?

Piccard and Borschberg were a good team. One could think outside the box. The other could fly there. Piccard started dreaming about the plane in 1999. They raised $120 million from corporate sponsors and investors. A test pilot in 2009 flew the plane for the first time. It managed to rise only three feet off the ground and stayed airborne for just 28 seconds. They called it the "flea hop." But it was a high-tech flea, built with extremely light-weight material made from carbon fibers. The wheels are smaller than the wheels on a kid's tricycle. This state of the art plane sometimes looks like it had been put together by a 6-year-old with an erector set.

Bob Simon: What is this?

Bertrand Piccard: This is the carbon fiber piece that makes the profile of the air foil on the leading edge of the airplane.

Bob Simon: And this weighs...nothing?

Bertrand Piccard: 91 grams.

Andre Borschberg: A fifth of a pound.

Bob Simon: Has there ever been anything so light before?

Bertrand Piccard: No, I don't think so.

And the solar cells are light too. Other cells available were more efficient but weighed more, and the Solar Impulse team needed cells flexible enough to create the contour of the wings. There are 12,000 of them.

Andre Borschberg: These solar cells make the surface of the wing. So they are not glued on the surface. They are the surface.

Bertrand Piccard: And these cells capture the energy of the sun and transform it into electricity. And then this electricity goes simultaneously to the engines and to the batteries and then we will reach the next sunrise and capture the sun again. And we can continue theoretically forever.

Almost all of the energy created by the cells ends up being used by the engines. Compared to car engines that can waste 70 percent of the energy provided. During the day, excess energy is stored in batteries -- batteries that are unusually efficient. Piccard says all the materials can be used for more practical applications.

Bertrand Piccard: If we can fly in a solar airplane like Solar Impulse with no fuel, just on solar power, then all the technologies here can, of course, also be used in the daily life for cars, for houses, for heating systems, cooling systems and so on.

While the technology was being fine tuned, Andre spent months inside a simulator so he could learn how to fly the plane himself. Then short flights to and from a military air base in Switzerland. The Alps provided a breathtaking backdrop, but they weren't in it for the scenery. They wanted altitude and distance. They took it out of Switzerland to Belgium and Paris, where they created quite a stir flying by the Eiffel Tower. But for once the French didn't complain. Solar Impulse was so quiet and elegant.

But the biggest challenge was flying at night. Were they ready? "Yes," said Piccard and he announced to the team that Andre would be in the cockpit.

[Bertrand Piccard: Andre will stay up there now as long as we can.]

And off he went, into the night. For eight hours, Andre flew in darkness over Switzerland. Andre could see nothing so the team on the ground had to track winds, squalls, battery levels. Watching this creature in the air -- long after the sun has surrendered - is almost unreal. The plane emerges from the darkness like an apparition. Just before the sun peeked through the clouds, Bertrand counted Andre down to the dawn.

[Bertrand Piccard: Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. We made it! We made it guys! Andre you should be with us right now.]

Andre made it with power to spare and, just think, he could have taken off again without refueling.

Bob Simon: It must be a pretty good sensation when that sun comes up in the morning.

Andre Borschberg: It is, well certainly because of the beauty, I mean the sunset is gorgeous but the sunrise of course brings us the next day there. It brings the hope again that you can continue.

Bertrand is continuing a family tradition --- visionaries, pioneers, adventurers. His father, Jacques, designed a new fangled submarine, squeezed himself inside, and went down seven miles beneath the surface of the Pacific and came up to talk about it. That was 50 years ago. His grandfather, Auguste, decided to go the other way - up. He'd heard the Earth was round, but wanted to see for himself. So, he designed a pressurized cabin, attached it to a balloon and flew it to an altitude of 10 miles.

Bertrand Piccard: It was considered by NASA as the first man in space. So in those days it was like going in another world.

Bob Simon: Was your grandfather in fact the first human being to see the curvature of the earth?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes. And that was really impressive for me as a kid because I was reading in the history books all the stories about the Earth being flat, being round or whatever. And my grandfather came back and said, "I saw the curvature of the Earth with my eyes." So once you live this as a kid, of course, you want to continue into that field of exploration.

And he did. In 1992, Bertrand entered and won the first ever trans-Atlantic balloon race. Seven years later, he entered a much more demanding race, flying around the world in a balloon nonstop in three weeks.

Bertrand landed in the Egyptian desert just in time. He was almost out of fuel, had almost fallen from the sky like Icarus. His balloon capsule is now on display at the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington -- right there with the Wright Brothers plane, Lindbergh's plane, the Spirit of Saint Louis and the Apollo 11 space capsule. Bertrand hopes Solar Impulse will eventually have a home here as well... and he told us the inspiration for the airplane started with that balloon landing in the desert.

Bertrand Piccard: When I landed there, there were 40 kilos, 80 pounds of liquid propane out of the 3.7 tons from the takeoff. It was almost a failure due to the dependency on fuel and on that day I made a promise. I made a promise that the next time I would fly around the world it would be with no fuel at all.

Earlier this year, they made their longest flights yet, from Switzerland to Spain and then across the Mediterranean to Morocco and back. For the flight round the world they will be in the air 20 days and 20 nights with several stops so the pilots can take turns.

Bob Simon: Flying over the Swiss Alps is pleasant enough but think about it, I can't move, I can't stand up and, if you want to think about a really pleasant thought, the toilet is built into the seat so you've got to figure out how to do that one way or another. Andre has already done this for 72 hours, but when the time comes for the big flight it'll take five days and five nights over the Pacific. Nothing like that has ever been done in a plane before.

And there is nothing they can do now to make it less dangerous. The plane is so light, a bad storm could dump it into the Pacific. It likes the sun but isn't fond of clouds. The cockpit is an oven by day and an ice box by night. And the plane itself can be temperamental. It flies well at 30 miles an hour, but can stall if the speed drops to 23. And it can tip over when it lands, unless crew members on the tarmac run and grab onto the metal struts attached to the wings. None of this seems to bother Bertrand Piccard, not with his genes and his laser-like focus.

Bertrand Piccard: Everything you do, you have to do it because you're well prepared and you're absolutely calm inside of yourself.

Bob Simon: You're also a psychiatrist.

Bertrand Piccard: Yes.

Bob Simon: Any mental devices, any tricks?

Bertrand Piccard: Yeah, I use a lot of self-hypnosis.

Bob Simon: You can hypnotize yourself?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Bob Simon:

Like that?

Bertrand Piccard: Little bit longer. Twice instead of once.

Bob Simon: No, but I mean, you could-- at any time, if you're in the plane--

Bertrand Piccard: Yes.

Bob Simon: And you feel - I need to hypnotize myself now, you can do it?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Bertrand and Andre hope to fly from California to Virginia next year. They are planning to fly around the world in 2015. Bertrand knows it's unlikely a solar plane will fly commercially in his lifetime, but feels he has done something more than invent something new. He has combined technology with poetry and proven what our ancestors knew thousands of years ago -- that the ultimate power is the sun.