Solar-powered plane makes 26-hour flight

This is exciting news, scientifically. I'm curious what practical applications there are. I can think of a few, but I'm sure it's not exhaustive<p>• Cheap, quick-to-setup communications relay (mobile cell tower with its own satellite uplink to reduce costs of on-the-ground devices?)<p>• Non-military surveillance (I assume it would be easy prey for anti-aircraft weaponry, but would probably be quite useful for constant surveying of disaster sites, for example)<p>• Small datacenter that is easy to keep out of any nation's jurisdiction (a few large hard drives and another satellite uplink, and just keep it circling over the Atlantic)<p>• Long-term airborne advertising (is it powerful enough to tow an old-school banner?)

Bertrand Piccard, who is leading this project, comes from a family of explorers (e.g. he was also the first to travel non-stop around the world in a hot-air balloon). He also gave a pretty interesting TED talk (starting with ballooning as a metaphor for life, then moving on the solar airplane project):<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/bertrand_piccard_s_solar_powered_adventure.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/bertrand_piccard_s_solar_powered_ad...</a>

Why don't they make a solar-powered airship? That's more practical. Airship requires less energy to stay up and navigate, and has greater surface area to receive sun light.

I have to say, I am not impressed with the article... "Perpetual Flight?" I say yes you can probably fly this airplane forever until a motor breaks or something BUT there is a big difference between a single pilot airplane that takes a team of people to ensure it does not have the wings scratched and a commercial airliner that runs on solar. While the airliner is awesome if we can pull it off, I would not be surprised if we were 20-50 years away from that.