Canadian start-up Solar Ship is challenging American global aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to a contest. This time there will be no handbags at forty paces. It wants to go neck-on-neck with helium-filled balloons right across the Atlantic Ocean.
What’s In It for Solar Ship Start-Up?
We are a cross between a Canada bush plane and a Tesla airship,” founder and ceo Jay Godsall explains. As a result the public are confused about the difference between our Wolverine aircraft and the Lockheed Martin LMI-1 airship. We therefore want them to understand what makes us different.
Pundits already know the main discriminator. Lockheed Martin uses four gimballed thrusters with power from 310 horsepower diesel engines. By comparison Solar Ship relies on a solar powered electric motor and it hopes to prove that this is simply better.
Plans for the Lockheed Martin – Solar Ship Contest
Lockheed Martin has yet to respond positively although it is ‘interested in learning more about the idea’. Jay Godsall hopes it does because he is planning a good-spirited contest ‘more like a hockey match’. Speaking to Skies Mag he explained the primary goal is to educate the public. His overall mission is to make air transport available everywhere on the planet.
The first leg of the race will be a 3,500-kilometer warm-up from Johannesburg to Kampala departing on Canada Day, 2018.
Solar Ship’s Jay Godsall explains the focus will always be on safety. This is since he wants to showcase technical capability, not cause unsafe conditions.
The second leg will depart the Lockheed Martin base in Palmdale, California on Canada Day, 2019. It will travel 22,000 kilometers before touching down in Africa. Who wins is less important than the goal.
The objective is to break the transportion gap with solar so we can deliver technology everywhere. We endorse the dream of leveling the playing fields for remote communities across the globe.
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