Since the beginning of aviation, pilots have always tried to surpass themselves, to fly further, faster and higher. A pilot often needed great determination and courage just to take-off, let alone to put his aircraft through its full paces and try to push back the frontiers of the possible. Even today, adventurers such as Solar Impulse pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, Troy Badley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev who completed the crossing of the Pacific Ocean on a gas balloon, often still venture into uncharted territory.