The Spotlight Cam – Solar ships with a bundled Ring solar panel to power the unit's 6,000 mAH battery.
They are an aircraft manufacturer with a social agenda, aiming to lease or sell solar ships to organisations and partners as another tool in their transportation arsenal.
So far, the company has successfully built and piloted three solar ships of different sizes in Canada's rugged and remote northern territories.
In recent years, the aerospace heavyweights Boeing and Northrop Grumman have developed airships; Russia, Brazil, and China have built or conceived prototypes, and Canada has designs for a few of them, including the Solar Ship, which looks like a bloated stealth bomber, with solar panels spread across the top of helium-filled wings.
However, Solar Ship is not an aid organisation.
The real secret to the solar ship, however, is its ability to land just about anywhere.
A solar ship could simply drop in to these places without infrastructure, roads, or landing strips, and deliver the essential goods.
Late last year, Solar Ship launched a $1m crowdsourcing campaign on the IndieGoGo crowd-funding website to pilot their first 'African Mission.' Sticking to Godsall's 30-year old dream, they will fly a solar ship from Cape Town to Lake Victoria, stopping every 500km to deliver fresh medical supplies to surrounding villages through local partners.
However, she says the organisation has taken its time "because we need to build the right relationships with local communities and partners," something she believes anybody using a solar ship would also have to do.
There may be more financial support for aid delivery than for luxury Zeppelin cruises over California's wine country, but Solar Ship may still find themselves up against similar challenges.
"Airships are older than radios, older than automobiles," claims Godsall, Founder of Solar Ship, the Toronto-based company now building the unique aircraft, "but no one has quite had the mission to do something like this with one".
