The Poop on the Puffin

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants 1 Comment

Under normal circumstances, this editor would never resort to scatological titles, but Mark Moore, the NASA aerospace engineer behind this fantastic flying creation calls his electric craft, “Puffin” because, according to Moore, the bird after which it is named, “Hides its poop, and we’re environmentally friendly because we essentially have no emissions.” Like the Puffin, this craft looks a bit chubby and incapable of flight on the ground, but folds its legs on liftoff, and becomes a streamlined bullet. Moore, who spoke at last year’s Third Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, and will return for this year’s CAFE Foundation gathering at NASA Ames Research Center in April, unveiled this concept at this year’s American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco. Moore and his colleagues, who include personnel at NASA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institutute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace, and M-DOT Aerospace, plan on flying a third-scale model of the VTOL craft in March, and thus Moore may …