Modern times offer little scope for fresh adventure. There are no new mountains to climb or uncharted oceans to cross, and few unprecedentedly daring things to do. But in 2015 a number of enterprising groups will push technology to its extremes as they seek to set new world records in the air, over land and on water.
First to get away will be a Swiss-based team who plan to fly around the world using only the power of the sun. Their craft (pictured above) is called Solar Impulse 2. Despite its 72-metre (236-foot) wingspan, it has room inside for only a single pilot. That job will be shared by the project’s leaders, two veteran adventurers: Bertrand Piccard, who in 1999 co-piloted Orbiter 3, the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe, and André Borschberg, a fighter pilot and engineer.
In March 2015 Solar Impulse 2 will take off from Abu Dhabi, head in an easterly direction over India and China, and then cross the Pacific, America, the Atlantic, southern Europe and north Africa. The aircraft will land along the way for displays. When crossing oceans it must stay aloft for five to six days at a time. That means climbing during the day to 8,500 metres as the 17,248 solar cells on the plane’s wings top up its lithium-ion batteries. At night the pilot will slowly descend to some 1,500 metres, eking out the power to four electric motors that turn the propellers. When the sun rises, it will climb again.
The team’s prototype, Solar Impulse 1, was used to develop some of the technology that will be needed. Last year it flew across the United States. Like most record attempts, the project has had to overcome misfortune. In 2012 the main wing spar of the second aircraft broke during structural tests. As the team are relying on highly advanced carbon-fibre construction techniques to save weight, some problems were expected. The lesson, says Mr Piccard, is to learn from mistakes and move on.
Sometimes that means reinventing the wheel—literally, in the case of Bloodhound SSC. This is a car being built to set a new world land-speed record by driving at 1,000mph (1,609kph). At that speed its four wheels will turn faster than any wheel has ever done; the danger is they might disintegrate from the massive g-forces being generated. The British team behind the project considered various ways to make the wheels before settling on a design that uses carefully forged high-grade aluminium. In June 2014 their wheel was successfully spun to the 174 revolutions a second it needs to withstand.
The test was carried out by Rolls-Royce at a facility the aerospace company uses in Derby, England, to try out jet-engine fans. All three projects rely not just on corporate sponsorship but also on firms providing materials and services, and in some cases lending engineers. For the sponsors, publicity is of course one motive. But the firms find it also stretches their engineers to encounter problems never seen before.
And there are plenty of unknowns with Bloodhound ssc. The car is powered by a jet engine from a Typhoon fighter aircraft and a hybrid rocket. It will be driven by Andy Green, a Royal Air Force pilot who holds the current land-speed record of 763mph. He set it in 1997 driving Thrust ssc in Nevada. In the autumn of 2015 Bloodhound ssc will be taken to Hakskeen Pan in South Africa’s Northern Cape, where Wing-Commander Green will try to beat his own record by reaching 800mph. If all goes well, he will aim for 1,000mph in 2016.
Wheels are not something Nigel Macknight has to worry about. He leads a British team called Quicksilver, which aims to break the water-speed record of 317.6mph set in 1978 by Ken Warby in Australia. Mr Macknight and his team of volunteers are building a hydroplane. It is designed to skim across the surface of the water powered by a Spey jet engine to set a new record of around 330mph.
The ultimate speed of the Quicksilver craft will be partly limited by the size of Coniston Water in England’s Lake District, where the team hope to make the record attempt. It is where Donald Campbell died in 1967 trying to beat his own record of 276.3mph. His jet-powered Bluebird k7 reared up and disintegrated. It was a meeting with the designers of Campbell’s craft that inspired Mr Macknight to launch his project. The team hope their hydroplane will be in the water in 2015 and ready for a record attempt the following year.
Campbell’s fate is an ominous reminder of how dangerous record-breaking can be. Even with the latest technology and some of the best engineering brains, the desire to go faster and farther remains an adventure into the unknown.
Paul Markillie: innovation editor, The Economist, and editor of its Technology Quarterly