There were many memorable high points during the last century. The whole world reverberated to the rhythm of the conquest of the poles and of Everest, of the exploration of the depths of the ocean, the stratosphere and space, the first steps on the moon.
From the earliest ground-hops to the first flight around the world in a balloon, these grand premieres all have one thing in common: they have profoundly changed our perception of the impossible.
In the 21st century, adventure must continue, but how do we perpetuate the pioneering spirit and cultivate the audacity of our predecessors?
Major challenges await humanity. They will open new horizons for science, but their objectives will be less to conquer unknown territories than to preserve the planet from today's threats, in order to sustain and improve our quality of life.
The next adventures will therefore be humanitarian and medical - combating extreme poverty and containing new epidemics, political - improving our governance of the planet, spiritual - rediscovering profound and soundly-based values, and of course technological - providing durable answers to the threats menacing our environment.
"Adventure is not necessarily a spectacular deed, but rather an "extra-ordinary" one, meaning something that pushes us outside our normal way of thinking and behaving. Something that forces us to leave the protective shell of our certainties, within which we act and react automatically. Adventure is a state of mind in the face of the unknown, a way of conceiving our existence as an experimental field, in which we have to develop our inner resources, climb our personal path of evolution and assimilate the ethical and moral values that we need to accompany our voyage." Bertrand Piccard
One could easily imagine oneself in a Jules Verne novel: a team wanting to promote renewable energies sets off round the world in a solar airplane, aiming to fly without fuel or pollution... The revenge of Icarus, in a way.
A new Utopia? A beautiful scene from science fiction? No, a cutting-edge technological challenge! A sufficiently eccentric project to appeal to one's emotions and get one's adrenalin pumping: to harness a clean and renewable form of energy, and use it to fly night and day without limit.
To have got over the hurdle of a first night in the air signifies being able to envisage another, and then another, and so get closer to an even more symbolic myth: perpetual flight.
As admirers of the visionary spirit of the famous novelist, Solar Impulse also wants to place dreams and science at the heart of human adventure, whilst bringing together those who aspire to the same values.
«A Jules Verne dream of today means the urge to explore the unknown and the force to do good, which must continue to inspire human beings. Take your time, be patient and determined, wrote my great grandfather Jules Verne, for everything great that has ever been achieved in the world, is the result of exaggerated ambitions. And it is this spirit that Bertrand Piccard symbolizes best in this project, which is ambitious but of universal benefit to mankind.» Jean Verne
Never before has one family had such an impact on the world of exploration as Auguste, Jacques and Bertrand Piccard. In this dynasty, one has been inventing and exploring for three generations: the pressurized capsule and the first flight in the stratosphere, the bathyscaphe and the absolute deep-sea diving record, the first non-stop, round-the-world, balloon flight. As author Jacques Lacarrière notes so judiciously: "The three of them combine man's maddest dreams, to become fish or bird".
Solar Impulse stands squarely in the middle of this ongoing traditional path of exploration, adventure and scientific development.
Auguste Piccard
Auguste opened the way to modern aviation and to the conquest of space, by inventing the principle of the pressurized cabin and the stratospheric balloon. With his first ascension into the stratosphere (to an altitude of 15,780 and then 16,201 meters in 1931 and 1932), to study cosmic rays, he became the first man to see the Earth's curvature with his own eyes. Applying the principle of his stratospheric balloon to the exploration of the ocean depths, he invented and built a revolutionary submarine, which he called the Bathyscaphe. While diving with his son Jacques to 3,150 meters in 1953, he became the man of extremes, the one who had both flown the highest and dived the deepest.
Jacques Piccard
Jacques made several record-breaking dives with Auguste, before becoming himself the man to have dived the deepest in the world, reaching a depth of 10,916 meters in the Mariannes Abyss, the deepest point in the oceans. While discovering life at that depth, and also verifying the existence of marine currents between the depths and the surface, this historic dive above all served to do away with the idea, which was common at the time, that one could get rid of highly toxic waste by dumping it in marine abysses. Following up his father's work, Jacques built the first tourist submarine. Then he explored the Gulf Stream with another mesoscaphe of his invention, in a drifting dive which lasted a month and also served, in collaboration with NASA, to prepare the Space Lab missions.
Bertrand Piccard
Bertrand was to also become an explorer, but first of all of the interior world. He became a psychiatrist, specializing in hypnotherapy. A pioneer of free flight and ULM in Europe, he showed a passionate interest in the study of human behavior in extreme situations, before getting involved with ballooning. He won the first transatlantic balloon race, before launching the Breitling Orbiter project. As captain of the three attempts, Bertrand succeeded with the Briton, Brian Jones, in making the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight and, at the same time, setting the record for the longest flight in the history of aviation, both in time and in distance. From now on, the Breitling Orbiter 3 capsule is on display in the main hall at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, along with the Apollo 11 capsule and the airplanes flown by the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager.
The full circle is completed with his entry in the Larousse after his grandfather and father. Following what one has described as the last great adventure of the 20th century, Bertrand became one of the most sought after conference speakers, developing his humanist vision of the adventure of life. However, he is also extremely concerned about people most in need, which explains why he has founded and presides over the humanitarian Winds of Hope Foundation and has been nominated as a goodwill ambassadors of the United Nations.
Bertrand's web site: www.bertrandpiccard.com
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From the depths to the sky
As André Borschberg returned from his first attempt to conquer the Moroccan desert, Bertrand Piccard jumped on a flight to the capital city of the United States. In fact, Bertrand, with his two siblings Thierry and Marie-Laure, have been invited to collect the Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic ...
As André Borschberg returned from his first attempt to conquer the Moroccan desert, Bertrand Piccard jumped on a flight to the capital city of the United States. In fact, Bertrand, with his two siblings Thierry and Marie-Laure, have been invited to collect the Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic Society bestowed on their father Jacques Piccard –explorer and oceanographer- posthumously.
The event will take place in Washington D.C on Thursday 14th of June and will also be an occasion to celebrate the 125th year since the founding of the event’s host, the National Geographic Society. The Medal will be presented by James Cameron, film Director (Titanic, Avater, and others), and Don Walsh, explorer, oceanographer and Jacques Piccard’s companion during the exploration of the world’s deepest point, Mariana Trench.
More than a record, the dive was a milestone for the protection of the environment: by proving the existence of life where nobody expected it, this discovery pushed the governments to ban the dumping of toxic waste into the deepest trenches.
Just like August Piccard with the invention of the pressurized chamber and first trip to the stratosphere (1931) and Jacques Piccard with the first exploration of the depths of the ocean (1960), Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg have proven the importance to act upon one’s ideas even when they might sound unfeasible.
On 6 February at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Micheline Calmy-Rey, former President of the Swiss Confederation, presented the report on sustainable development written by a panel of heads of state at the behest of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Aware of the very clear message from Solar Impulse in favour of technologies that can reduce our dependency on fossil energy, she had asked Bertrand to speak alongside her.
For him this was an opportunity to bring up the story about an exchange with his meteorologists during his round-the-world balloon trip and ...
Aware of the very clear message from Solar Impulse in favour of technologies that can reduce our dependency on fossil energy, she had asked Bertrand to speak alongside her.
For him this was an opportunity to bring up the story about an exchange with his meteorologists during his round-the-world balloon trip and which describes so well the question of sustainability and the long-term vision. Very pleased with himself at having found an altitude where the winds were pushing him twice as fast as the team's calculations had suggested, his advisors replied ironically: "Do you prefer to fly very quickly in the wrong direction or more slowly in the right one?". "This is the question that governments should be asking now given the speed at which humanity is moving towards massive public debt, the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of our environment."
As Bertrand pointed out: "Today's pioneers should not limit themselves to being explorers who walk on the moon or who do trips round the world; they should be heads of state resolved to meet the even more ambitious challenge of improving the quality of life on this planet.
The report ends with a list of practical recommendations for governments and international institutions, such as the need to remove the many subsidies still given to fossil energy and to include the environmental costs in the prices of all products. "Lastly an official stance that a legal framework is essential to change certain types of behaviour", say Bertrand and André happy to have included this subject in their Energy Charter last year.
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