Meet the Puffin: A NASA made personal air vehicle.

In normal conditions I prefer talk about NASA UFO cover up agenda, but I came across with this article about a project created by the aerospace engineer Mark Moore. A unusual vertical take-off and landing tailsitter personal air craft, named "Puffin". Definitely is the coolest thing I've seen lately, about aerospace engineering 'cos is the most compact aerial vehicle, ever.

Moore came up with the design for the electric powered, 12-foot (3.7 m) long, 14.5-foot (4.4 m) wingspan personal air vehicle as part of the coursework for his doctoral degree. Then Langley's creativity and innovation and revolutionary technical challenges funds paid for much of the research. How the Puffin rocketed from esoteric erudition to web sensation is a classic case study in the power of the viral nature of the web(...)

Even the technical details were pretty interesting. If ever built the proposed aircraft would be small and very lightweight -- about 300 pounds (136 kg) empty weight plus another 100 pounds (45 kg) of battery and 200 pounds (91 kg) for the pilot or payload. The design would be powered by a total of 60 horsepower through electric motors, which are designed to be able to fail any two powertrain components on either side and still produce the required power to hover. It has a cruising speed of 150 mph (241 kph), but cruises more efficiently at lower speeds The range with current battery technology would be about 50 miles (80 km).

Full article

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[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/149b7dc90cb6.jpg[/atsimg]



I just got crazy watching the video CG presentation. It's really awesome, a very inspired project and open a new perspective to aerial transportation, 'cos once it become a commercial product, people will many people will stop flying on chartered planes and helicopters, to use their own private compact wings that seems enable to park in small yards and even building roofs and probably it will cost less than a car. However it seems that the prototype is still in the academic field and there's no mention about scale production, training and qualification for piloting.

However I hope this guy, Mark Moore, change the name of this project to "Icarus", "Vimana" or something like that, 'cos "Puffin" is kinda silly.


[edit on 10-4-2010 by ucalien]

Mod Edit: New External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 10/4/2010 by ArMaP]

don't want to seem like a troll ... well, ok some of you might think i am and there's nothing i can do about it, that's fine. but this puffin has already been discussed before, just a simple search for "puffin" using the google custom search box gave me these:

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if we're able to read articles from other sites discussing whatever it is they discuss, can we not do a search before we post? i mean, c'mon!?

on topic:
i wouldn't want to fly in something named icarus, i hope i'm not the only one who remembers what happened to him while he was flying.

reply to post by ucalien

I didn't notice previous topic about this subject, thus, mods feel free to close the thread.

reply to post by toreishi

To someone that doesn't contribute too much, you are too quick to criticize. Get a life!!

The best part is when you are flying in one and it starts to plunge towards earth...

You are going in Face First baby!!!

Honestly, and sadly, I don't think that personal flying aircraft will ever be "allowed". Just think what would happen if suddenly a company started selling some sort of personal flying craft at an affordable price, such that almost anyone could go get one.

This opens a huge can of worms. Flight paths would have to be defined, pilot licensing, "parking" rules, etc. Is your average Joe that is rushing to get to the office to a meeting going to obey flight rules? Is your average person going to be able to communicate effectively with an air traffic control tower? Are air traffic controllers going to be able to stand dealing with at first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of newbie pilots clogging their screens (granted I doubt personal craft would fly near enough to interfere with commercial flights, but surely there would have to be some sort of flight control and tracking coordinators).

How long would it take for someone to get an "FUI", or just cause an accident from spilling coffee, falling asleep, or just being a crappy pilot, that, had it been in a car, would have resulted in little to no injury, but now they are smashing into someones house, or a school, or a hospital. I don't even have to mention the terrorism aspect.

All of these reasons and many many more are why personal aircraft will never be sanctioned.

I know scenes of flying cars in "The Jetsons" and "The Fifth Element" look cool, but look at your average people in the grocery store, or your office mates...do you really trust them all to responsibly and professional pilot what amounts to a flying bomb?

Hell I know many people that I am nervous just getting into a car with, and grit my teeth while watching them try successfully park in a space while staying in the lines.

Perhaps the solution is to have a "taxi service", which uses a limited number of craft with skilled pilots, who could pick up people at a place similar to a bus stop and take them to destination X. That would at least remove the "crazy joe pilot" aspect.

I don't think this is a particularly good idea, for several reason. Aside from reasons the previous poster has stated, if you could fly one of those then you would be almost qualified to fly a helicopter. Aside from price, a helicopter is a far better choice. Those rotor blades - people would definitely end up getting something chopped off by one, either by their own stupidity, or that of the pilot. If these became available for anyone, we'd get the same kind of 'joyriding' we get in cars, mainly with so-called 'boy racers'. When I was learning to fly a helicopter, I nearly got hit by a landing plane, because my instructor didn't notice it (he was the one talking to the tower, and if you're a pilot you know that being able to understand what is being said over the radio is something that takes some time!). He was in the bloody RAF before becomming an instructor, and still we nearly locked horns with a Red Arrow. It wouldn't be long before getting a license for one of these became a little more relaxed, you'd get 16 year old flying about in them, showing off, old people trying to fly them at 15 mph...just not good things. In my opinion, anyway

EDIT: I agree with the taxi thing - much better idea than these things being as freely available as a car.

[edit on 10-4-2010 by ShadowArcher]

Originally posted by ucalien
reply to post by toreishi

 

To someone that doesn't contribute too much, you are too quick to criticize. Get a life!!

Actually toreishi was quite correct in pointing out that a similar thread had been doing the rounds a while back and that a simple search would have picked it up. I've noticed a tendency lately for multiple unnecessary threads to be started even though there isan ongoing thread on the same topic.

Also, don't you think you were a bit unfair in your accusation ?
A quick check shows that toreishi has done a reasonable amount of posting compared to yourself ... she has 56 threads, 770 posts and 14 applauses ... a good effort in my opinion.

Please continue the discussion on an existing thread, like this one.

Thread closed.