NASA’s Puffin Is Way Cooler Than a Jetpack | Hacker News Reader

NASA’s Puffin Is Way Cooler Than a Jetpack

wired.com

25 pointsMaysonL21 comments

Cool. It looks like it would be a big strain on the neck, having to hold your head up like that, but on the other hand, it's only for short flights...

But the real questions is: how do you see the ground while you're landing, if you're facing up?

This needs some VR goggles. Not only would they solve the neck strain problem, but could assist non-professional pilots with landing.

I would have to assume that the landings must be somewhat assisted via a fly-by-wire system of some sort. Given the size of the rotors vs the lightness of the airframe this thing would be very very touchy to land so some sort of intermediate computer translation of the pilot input would be a given.

Unless I flubbed the numbers, the thing runs out of batteries after about 20 minutes (at 140 MPH). That's a lot less strainful than, say, archaeological excavation.

Apparently, there is a chin pad for that: look closely in the video at 1:40. Now only your jaws will hurt, but not your neck...

I hold my head up like that when cycling or scuba diving. It's not much of a strain.

how do you see the ground while you're landing, if you're facing up?

I guess you look down. The windshield looks transparent in that direction.

What's with the FedEx plug at the beginning of the video? Is it just to make it look "airporty"?

I disagree. Jet Packs are way cooler.

If you think every schmuck will be able to handle one of these, forget it. This is what I always think of when I see a "lol flying car!" story.

Lacking door-to-door autopilot, you'll still have to take all the usual pilot's training. Remember that idiot who nearly ran into you today because he/she was texting and trying to drink from a Starbucks cup? People have a hard enough time handling two dimensions--but when you screw up piloting your Puffin, you don't get a fender bender, you get two 1,000 lb objects dropping from 4,000 feet into my back yard.

This isn't really new. It looks very similar to the Convair Pogo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XFY

Not a fan of the head-first approach. Crashes and the aforementioned neck strain.

On the other hand, I would imagine it would be possible to construct an L-shape sitting cockpit that could rotate in relation to the engines so that the pilot would be head-up in both takeoff/landing and flight.

My sense is that the Osprey is pretty complex due to it's VTOL features. I don't quite see how this is any less complicated, I wonder how reliably this could be made to operate.

The entire rotor assembly on the Osprey pivots. On the Puffin it is fixed and the entire craft changes its orientation between takeoff, flight, and landing. Whether that makes it more reliable or easier to operate, I have no idea.

It sure does. Changing the orientation of the Osprey's rotors must subject the whole assembly to some nasty forces.

Ah, good points here guys. I had not thought of that.

Why is a federal agency developing this? How is this in the national interest?

NASA has a long history of working on jet packs. Initially these were proposed for hopping around the moon:

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/RPIF/beta/

Regardless of precedents I see no justification for taxpayer dollars.

Umm... flying mech commandos? :)

No bugs in my teeth? That definitely makes jetpack > puffin. Electric jetpacks are a way off, though, so it definitely wins there.

Free protein!

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