FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN FULL
FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN PLUS

Even the social media site 'Twitter' has been all a-twitter with more than 1,200 tweets about the Puffin in a week.įor Moore the publicity was an added bonus, but it was the way the work was accomplished that really excited him. Moore and the NASA Langley News Media Team got inquiries from a New York Times blogger, Germany's biggest Sunday paper, a French men's magazine, ABC News and many more.

FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN FULL

A full 'Google' search of 'NASA Puffin' indicated there were more than 38,000 hits for the combined words. The first web story snowballed until the Puffin garnered worldwide attention, capturing more than 10 search pages in less than seven days with stories in media from Japan, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Chile, Spain, Guatemala, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Norway, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, and others. 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). 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.

FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN PLUS

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. It lifts off like a helicopter, hovers and then leans forward to fly horizontally with the pilot lying down like in a hang-glider.Įven the technical details were pretty interesting. Its tail splits into four 'legs' that serve as landing gear. It's not everyday that you see a design that's part plane, part helicopter that stands upright on the ground.

The pictures and video of the Puffin helped attract media attention too. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle.' So the vehicle is environmentally friendly because it essentially has no emissions. 'But it's also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop. There Moore was quoted as saying the team named the design the Puffin because, '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. Combine NASA cachet with an intriguing technology concept, some compelling animation created by Analytical Mechanics Associates graphic designers and quotable quotes from Moore and the story of the Puffin lifted off.įirst it appeared on the Scientific American website from the original interview on electric aircraft propulsion.

Moore not only shared information about electric motor research for airplanes, but also the Puffin design that he and a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), and M-DOT Aerospace planned to present to an American Helicopter Society conference on aeromechanics, Jan. Moore is a nationally recognized expert on that and other small aircraft systems. It all started with an email from a reporter who was pursuing a story on electric aircraft propulsion for 'a couple of websites associated with .' As the former manager of the former Vehicle System program's Personal Air Vehicle sector. 19, the video had only been clicked on a couple of thousand times since it was uploaded to the NASAPAV channel last November.'

'Until the concept was mentioned in the media Jan. 'The animation of the Puffin on YouTube has gotten more 648,000 hits in a week,' said Moore. 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. Then Langley's creativity and innovation and revolutionary technical challenges funds paid for much of the research. 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.

Flight of the puffin