Egyptian gods and Greek myths

A project for everyone

After it had been proven that solar aircraft were generally feasible, participants from many countries began to register for the competition and send their project designs to Ulm.

The Faculty of Aeronautic and Astronautic Engineering in Stuttgart also decided to take part in this competition. A project group was founded within the faculty with this objective in mind. The participants included both teaching staff and students.

Many parts of the aircraft were developed by the group itself. The propeller, for instance, was developed specially, as were the fuselage and the wings. Much of the research for this was conducted by students in term papers and diploma dissertations. The results of this work were directly fed into development. This project group gave rise to around 40 term papers and diploma dissertations.

The individual institutes made their facilities available for measurements and calculations. The aircraft was assembled at the Institute for Aircraft Engineering.

A prototype was developed and constructed to check the initial design. This aircraft, which was called Icare, was planned as a muscle-driven plane. After many concepts had been successfully tested in this study, construction of the solar craft itself began, which was then given the name Icare II. The name is a combination of Icarus, the figure of Greek legend, and the Egyptian sun god, Re.