I enjoy laughing my ass off at the "experts" who proclaim their verdicts without knowing or making much of an effort to learn the background of this and similar efforts.
PV powered flight is another aviation milestone.
PV powered manned flight is another aviation milestone.
A successful PV powered manned around the world non stop would be another aviation milestone.
So say every major aviation group. The US Air Force, the Air & Space Museum, the EAA, the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, AOPA, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale,and others.
But you people know better.
Rutan's round-the-world-non-stop-non-refueled tested and refined several aviation technologies. Liquid cooled horizontally opposed engines, noise canceling headsets, low cost data acquisition and telemetry, just to name a few. It wasn't ever conceived nor designed to be a personal achievement only. The design and technology stretches required for success were at least as severe as Lindberg's or Yeager's flight, which were also aviation milestones.
Low cost extremely high endurance PV powered machines could be used for all kinds of surveillance and not just for the military, for example: for crops monitoring, tracking waves patterns, tracking plant disease, traffic management, tracking of tagged animals, oil spill tracking, animal migration, poacher mitigation, counter smuggling, the list is vast.
But because you big thinkers cannot get past the the current fact that it will not replace the existing power source, you mentally become mired in a bizarre mix of political/stagnant technology ranting. Yea, you come across as lost village idiots.
All early innovative attempts and research faced the same kind of small minded, limited scope objections and proclamations. In fact, history favors the bold thinkers and not the ignorant whiners.