Impressive designs guys. I love new teck and all it's possibility's.

Is there a possibility to read some of the research publications of these conceptual design studies?

Out of all the designs, the Puffin is the one that sticks in my opinion. Small, maneuverable, and unlike the plane oriented designs, minimal chance of injury to others during TOL (as the propellers are positioned vertically). One thing to add to it would be some manner of ejection (or a parachute for the entire vehicle) and I think the design would be quite marketable.

Hi i just commented on one of your videos and browsed through the others. Just wanted to say FYI, that "Tanzenflugel" doesn't make sense in german. It would be either "Tanzfluegel" (Dancing Wing) or ´"Tanzfluegler" ("Dancing Winger", An aircraft with dancing wings :) )

"Tanzenfluegel" would be "To Dance Wing" :D
Greetings, Andi

Open source? Can interested amateurs reproduce this great work?

Thanks for your comment, I am much in the same boat as you in terms of hang gliding experience. I have found it enjoyable, but did not want to put the money into it. As long as there is a good support system - flight for less than an hour should be fine. But I understand that it is different so the burden is always on the person proposing something new. But again, I'm not trying to provide a product here - I want to understand what electric propulsion can do, because it is not merely swapping out one motor for another. Electric propulsion offers as radical a change, as turbines did in the 1940's from reciprocating engines.

Mark

Heh - I've been reading the comments... lots of people who think they know all the reasons we can't do something, and have no interest in figuring out how we could do it.

WRT the Puffin - many years ago, I did a small amount of hang gliding (as much as I could without ponying up the $3k I'd need to do it "for real"), and I recall a video my instructor played of a guy who'd flown for hours, and was so exhausted that he fell asleep on his landing approach. The crash looked like it might have been painful. I don't think neck position is an issue in a prone-pilot design. :-)

Personal interest. I am familiar with the type of research conducted by public research groups like those at the NASA labs and DOE labs, and was actually interested in such things myself until I bogged down in academia... but I never lost interest in what's going on.

Actually the current NASA Centennial Challenge with CAFE is called the Green Flight Challenge - I assisted in developing those rules and was the primary force at NASA to make that prize happen. I was also the originator of the prior GATC challenge prizes. I am at NASA and am a senior conceptual design engineer - again, I perfomred all the studies that these vehicles represent. But none of these efforts are about developing products - they are about developing technologies for US companies who then develop products. The Vehicle Systems Program used to have a PAV Sector, I was the manager of that project and have led all the PAV efforts at NASA over the past 10 years. Is there a specific reason for this interest?

Ah, yeah I double-checked - the PAV was one of the "challenges" conducted with CAFE. Do you work for NASA or do your own thing (or can you even say)?