Meet the Puffin. It's an airplane concept conjured up by the mind of aerospace engineer Mark Moore. The unusual looking, vertical take-off and landing tailsitter is only an idea, but you'd never know that from the attention the Puffin has gotten on the Internet.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.
"The animation of the Puffin on YouTube has gotten more 648,000 hits in a week," said Moore. "Until the concept was mentioned in the media Jan. 19, the video had only been clicked on a couple of thousand times since it was uploaded to the NASAPAV channel last November."
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 space.com." As the former manager of the former Vehicle System program's Personal Air Vehicle sector. Moore is a nationally recognized expert on that and other small aircraft systems.
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