NOVA: The Impossible Flight DVD

Liked it so much Im buying the DVD as a gift for my family so they can see it too. Thank you PBS for all your awesome programming - much appreciated! :)

I watched this 2-hour documentary on PBS last night (8 pm - 10 pm, January 31, 2018). It is a very well-told story of the amazing and inspiring 16-year project by a group of (60 ? 70 ?) people of many nationalities, academic and professional backgrounds who put in impossible amounts of time, skill and creativity to conceive, design, finance, build and fly a solar-powered (NO fossil fuel here) aircraft that they flew around the world. The airplane is as light as a feather, and because of the inviolable constraints of physics, operates on the razors edge between high altitude flight and utter disaster. People casually throw around the words technology and high-tech to describe everything from new transmogrifications of bovine milking machines to embarrassingly transparent internet scams like b**coin. Before anybody uses the term high-tech again, they should watch this documentary. THIS project represents the intersection of large doses of human creativity, ingenuity, imagination and courage, mixed with sunlight to produce an authentic example of what high technology really is. The varied and well-honed talents and competencies of the members of the team of scientists and engineers who built the plane and its support infrastructure are only outdone by the sheer coho--knees (no other way to put it) of the pilots who each, one at a time, put their lives on the line to successfully fly this diaphanous aircraft, solo, into the unforgiving void, crossing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Asia, North America and Europe while skillfully dodging the ubiquitous threats of weather and their own human limitations. Its an amazing tale. I just wish I could send a copy of this DVD to the department head of every university science and engineering program in the U.S. And, a copy to every member of Congress. But, of course, sending this to the latter group would be a waste of money and a fools errand.