What’s NASA Been Puffin’?
Probably the worst part about working is the daily commute each way, stuck in traffic. NASA aerospace engineer, Mark Moore, dreams of the day we all get around like the Jetsons, flying around in our own personal space cars, instead.
He’s come up with the Puffin, a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) personal aircraft, as part of his doctoral thesis. It’s purely designed for single occupancy- only 12′ long with a 14.5′ wingspan, and it’s completely electrically powered. Even more bizarrely, it’s part plane, part helicopter, and part “WTF is that?!?!?”
“If you’ve ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that’s exactly what our vehicle looks like,” Moore says. “But it’s also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop. So the vehicle is environmentally friendly because it essentially has no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle.”
It’s designed to be lightweight and efficient- only 400 lbs total weight for the aircraft and battery combined, and can carry up to an additional 200 lbs of passenger and cargo. The motors are redundant, allowing the pilot to continue to hover safely even if multiple power train components fail, and produce a total of 6o HP. This would allow the lucky pilot to zing through the air at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, but only with a cruising range of about 50 miles.
Although it’s just a concept at this point, Moore has presented the design at a conference on aeromechanics and hopes that the concepts of the Puffin will take hold in other designs.
Source: NASA
