Bertrand Piccard's solar-powered adventure

50,904 views ・ 2010-01-01

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
Well, I learned a lot of things about ballooning,
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especially at the end of these balloon flights
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around the world I did with Brian Jones.
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When I took this picture,
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the window was frozen because of the moisture of the night.
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And on the other side there was a rising sun.
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So, you see that on the other side of ice
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you have the unknown,
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you have the non-obvious,
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you have the non-seen,
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for the people who don't dare
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to go through the ice.
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There are so many people
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who prefer to suffer in the ice they know
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instead of taking the risk of going through the ice
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to see what there is on the other side.
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And I think that's one of the main problems of our society.
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We learn, maybe not the famous TED audience,
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but so many other people learn,
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that the unknown, the doubts,
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the question marks are dangerous.
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And we have to resist to the changes.
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We have to keep everything under control.
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Well, the unknown is part of life.
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And in that sense, ballooning is a beautiful metaphor.
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Because in the balloon, like in life,
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we go very well in unforeseen directions.
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We want to go in a direction,
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but the winds push us in another direction, like in life.
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And as long as we fight horizontally,
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against life, against the winds,
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against what's happening to us,
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life is a nightmare.
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How do we steer a balloon?
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By understanding that the atmosphere
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is made out of several different layers of wind
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which all have different direction.
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So, then, we understand that if we want to change our trajectory,
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in life, or in the balloon,
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we have to change altitude.
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Changing altitude, in life,
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that means raising to another psychological, philosophical,
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spiritual level.
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But how do we do that?
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In ballooning, or in life,
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how do we change altitude?
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How do we go from the metaphor
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to something more practical that we can really
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use every day?
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Well, in a balloon it's easy, we have ballast.
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And when we drop the ballast overboard we climb.
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Sand, water, all the equipment we don't need anymore.
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And I think in life it should be exactly like this.
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You know, when people speak about pioneering spirit,
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very often they believe that pioneers
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are the ones who have new ideas.
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It's not true.
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The pioneers are not the ones who have new ideas,
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because new ideas are so easy to have.
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We just close our eyes for a minute we all come back
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with a lot of new ideas.
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No, the pioneer is the one who
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allows himself to throw overboard a lot of ballast.
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Habits, certainties,
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convictions, exclamation marks,
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paradigms, dogmas.
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And when we are able to do that,
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what happens?
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Life is not anymore
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just one line going in one direction
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in one dimension. No.
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Life is going to be made out of all the possible lines
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that go in all the possible directions
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in three dimensions.
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And pioneering spirit will be each time we allow ourselves
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to explore this vertical axis.
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Of course not just like the atmosphere in the balloon,
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but in life itself.
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Explore this vertical axis, that means
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explore all the different ways to do,
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all the different ways to behave, all the different ways to think,
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before we find the one that goes in the direction we wish.
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This is very practical.
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This can be in politics.
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This can be in spirituality.
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This can be in environment,
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in finance, in education of children.
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I deeply believe
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that life is a much greater adventure
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if we manage to do politics
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without the trench between the left and the right wing.
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Because we will throw away these political dogmas.
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I deeply believe that we can make much more protection of the environment
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if we get rid -- if we throw overboard
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this fundamentalism that some of the greens have showed in the past.
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And that we can aim for much higher spirituality
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if we get rid of the religious dogmas.
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Throwing overboard, as ballast, to change our direction.
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Well, these basically are things I believed in such a long time.
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But actually I had to go around the world in a balloon
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to be invited to talk about it.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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It's clear that it's not easy to know which ballast to drop
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and which altitude to take. Sometime we need
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friends, family members or a psychiatrist.
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Well, in balloons we need weather men,
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the one who calculate the direction of each layer of wind,
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at which altitude, in order to help the balloonist.
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But sometimes it's very paradoxical.
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When Brian Jones and I were flying around the world,
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the weather man asked us, one day, to fly
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quite low, and very slow.
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And when we calculated we thought we're never going to make it
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around the world at that speed.
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So, we disobeyed. We flew much higher, and double the speed.
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And I was so proud to have found that jetstream
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that I called the weather man,
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and I told him, "Hey, guy, don't you think we're good pilots up there?
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We fly twice the speed you predicted."
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And he told me, "Don't do that. Go down immediately
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in order to slow down."
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And I started to argue. I said, "I'm not going to do that.
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We don't have enough gas to fly so slow."
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And he told me, "Yes, but with the low pressure you have on your left
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if you fly too fast, in a couple of hours
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you will turn left and end up at the North Pole.
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(Laughter)
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And then he asked me --
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and this is something I will never forget in my life --
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he just asked me, "You're the good pilot up there.
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What do you really want? You want to go very fast
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in the wrong direction, or slowly in the good direction?
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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And this is why you need weathermen.
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This is why you need people with long-term vision.
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And this is precisely what fails
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in the political visions we have now,
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in the political governments.
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We are burning, as you heard,
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so much energy,
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not understanding that such an unsustainable
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way of life cannot last for long.
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So, we went down actually.
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We slowed down. And we went through moments of fears
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because we had no idea how the little amount of gas
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we had in the balloon
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could allow us to travel 45,000 kilometers.
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But we were expected to have doubts; we're expected to have fears.
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And actually this is where the adventure really started.
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When we were flying over the Sahara and India
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it was nice holidays.
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We could land anytime and fly back home with an airplane.
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In the middle of the Pacific,
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when you don't have the good winds, you cannot land,
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you cannot go back.
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That's a crisis.
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That's the moment when you have to wake up
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from the automatic way of thinking.
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That's the moment when you have to motivate
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your inner potential,
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your creativity.
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That's when you throw out all the ballast,
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all the certainties,
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in order to adapt to the new situation.
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And actually, we changed completely our flight plan.
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We changed completely our strategy.
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And after 20 days we landed successfully in Egypt.
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But if I show you this picture
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it's not to tell you how happy we were.
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It's to show you how much gas was left
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in the last bottles.
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We took off with 3.7 tons of liquid propane.
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We landed with 40 kilos.
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When I saw that, I made a promise to myself.
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I made a promise that the next time I would fly around the world,
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it would be with no fuel,
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independent from fossil energies,
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in order to be safe,
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not to be threatened by the fuel gauge.
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I had no idea how it was possible.
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I just thought it's a dream and I want to do it.
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And when the capsule of my balloon was introduced
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officially in the Air and Space Museum in Washington,
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together with the airplane of Charles Lindbergh,
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with Apollo 11, with the Wright Brothers' Flyer,
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with Chuck Yeager's 61,
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I had really a thought then.
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I thought, well, the 20th century, that was brilliant.
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It allowed to do all those things there.
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But it will not be possible in the future any more.
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It takes too much energy. It will cost too much.
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It will be prohibited
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because we'll have to save our natural resources
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in a few decades from now.
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So how can we perpetuate
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this pioneering spirit
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with something that will be independent from fossil energy?
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And this is when the project Solar Impulse
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really started to
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turn in my head.
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And I think it's a nice metaphor also
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for the 21st century.
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Pioneering spirit should continue, but on another level.
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Not to conquer the planet or space,
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not anymore, it has been done,
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but rather to improve the quality of life.
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How can we go through the ice of certainty
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in order to make the most incredible a possible thing?
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What is today completely impossible --
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get rid of our dependency on fossil energy.
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If you tell to people, we want to be independent
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from fossil energy in our world,
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people will laugh at you, except here,
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where crazy people are invited to speak.
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(Laughter)
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So, the idea is that if we fly around the world
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in a solar powered airplane,
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using absolutely no fuel,
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nobody ever could say in the future
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that it's impossible to do it
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for cars, for heating systems,
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for computers, and so on and so on.
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Well, solar power airplanes are not new.
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They have flown in the past, but without
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saving capabilities, without batteries.
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Which means that they have more proven
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the limits of renewable energies
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than the potential of it.
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If we want to show the potential,
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we have to fly day and night.
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That means to load the batteries during the flight,
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in order to spend the night on the batteries,
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and fly the next day again.
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It has been made, already, on remote controlled
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little airplane models, without pilots.
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But it stays an anecdote
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because the public couldn't identify to it.
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I think you need a pilot in the plane
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that can talk to the universities,
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that can talk to students,
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talk to politicians during the flight,
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and really make it a human adventure.
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For that, unfortunately,
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four meters wingspan is not enough.
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You need 64 meter wingspan.
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64 meter wingspan to carry one pilot, the batteries,
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flies slowly enough with the aerodynamic efficiency.
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Why that? Because fuel is not easy to replace.
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That's for sure.
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And with 200 square meters of solar power on our plane,
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we can produce the same energy
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than 200 little lightbulbs.
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That means a Christmas tree, a big Christmas tree.
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So the question is, how can you carry a pilot around the world
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with an airplane that uses
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the same amount of energy as a big Christmas tree?
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People will tell you it's impossible,
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and that's exactly why we try to do it.
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We launched the project with my colleague Andre Borschberg
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six years ago.
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We have now 70 people in the team working on it.
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We have gone through the stages of simulation, design,
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computing, preparing the construction
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of the first prototype.
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That has been achieved after two years of work.
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Cockpit, propeller, engine.
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Just the fuselage here, it's so light.
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It's not designed by an artist, but it could be.
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50 kilos for the entire fuselage.
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Couple of kilos more for the wing spars.
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This is the complete structure of the airplane.
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And one month ago we have unveiled it.
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You cannot imagine how it is for a team
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who has been working six years on it
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to show that it's not only a dream and a vision,
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it's a real airplane.
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A real airplane that we could finally present.
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And what's the goal now?
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The goal is to take off,
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end of this year for the first test,
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but mainly next year, spring or summer,
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take off, on our own power,
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without additional help, without being towed,
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climb to 9,000 meters altitude.
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The same time we load the batteries,
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we run the engines, and when we get at the maximum height,
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we arrive at the beginning of the night.
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And there, there will be just one goal, just one:
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reach the next sunrise before the batteries are empty.
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(Laughter)
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And this is exactly the symbol of our world.
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If our airplane is too heavy,
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if the pilot wastes energy,
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we'll never make it through the night.
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And in our world, if we keep on spoiling,
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wasting our energy resources,
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if we keep on building things that consume so much energy
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that most of the companies now go bankrupt,
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it's clear that we'll never give the planet to the next generation
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without a major problem.
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So, you see that this airplane is more a symbol.
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I don't think it will transport 200 people
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in the next years.
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But when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic,
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the payload was also just sufficient
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for one person and some fuel.
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And 20 years later there were 200 people
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in every airplane crossing the Atlantic.
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So, we have to start,
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and show the example.
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A little bit like on this picture here.
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This is a painting from Magritte,
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in the museum in Holland that I love so much.
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It's a pipe, and it's written, "This is not a pipe."
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This is not an airplane.
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This is a symbol of what we can achieve
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when we believe in the impossible,
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when we have a team,
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when we have pioneering spirit,
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and especially when we understand
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that all the certainties we have
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should be thrown overboard.
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What pleases me very much
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is that in the beginning I thought that we would have to fly
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around the world with no fuel
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in order to have our message been understood.
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And more and more, we're invited around the world with Andre
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to talk about that project, to talk about the symbol of it,
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invited by politicians, invited in energy forums,
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in order to show that it's not anymore
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completely stupid
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to think about getting rid of the dependency
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on fossil energies.
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So, through speeches like this one today,
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through interviews, through meetings,
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our goal is to get as many people possible on the team.
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The success will not come
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if we "just," quote, unquote,
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fly around the world in a solar-powered airplane.
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No, the success will come
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if enough people are motivated
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to do exactly the same in their daily life,
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save energy, go to renewables.
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And this is possible. You know, with the technologies we have today,
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we can save between 30 and 50 percent
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of the energy of a country in Europe,
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and we can solve half of the rest with renewables.
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It leaves 25 or 30 percent for
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oil, gas, coal, nuclear, or whatever.
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This is acceptable.
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This is why all the people who believe
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in this type of spirit
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are welcome to be on that team.
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You can just go on SolarImpulse.com, subscribe
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to just be informed of what we're doing.
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But much more, to get advices,
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to give your comments, to spread the word
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that if it's possible in the air,
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of course it's possible in the ground.
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And each time we have some ice in the future,
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we have to know that life will be great,
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and the success will be brilliant
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if we dare to overcome our fear of the ice,
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to go through the obstacle,
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to go through the problem, in order to see what there is on the other side.
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So, you see, this is what we're doing on our side.
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Everyone has his goal, has his dreams,
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has his visions.
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The question I leave you with now
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is which is the ballast
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you would like to throw overboard?
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Which will be the altitude at which
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you would like to fly in your life,
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to get to the success that you wish to have,
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to get to the point that really belongs to you,
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with the potential you have,
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and the one you can really fulfill?
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Because the most renewable energy we have
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is our own potential, and our own passion.
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So, let's go for it, and I wish you an excellent adventure
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in the wings of the future. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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