Piccard And His Balloons

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 60, 12 March 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

Piccard And His Balloons

A SKY-GOING "dog team" of 2000 small balloons hitched to a hermetically-scaled gondola is what Dr. Jean Piccard, University of Minnesota stratosphere scientist, proposes to use on his forthcoming jump into the netherland of the cosmic ray where there is neither air nor weather. Twenty miles straight up is the goal he has set for himself. The start will be made in the Mid-West as soon as the balloons are ready, late this year or early next. The tall, mild-mannered, extremely courageous former chemistry instructor at Chicago University discussed his plans for me shortly after making an experimental 11,000 ft flight in a wicker basket borne aloft by 8? small balloons. "Tlhia flight showed oonclusi/vely that the idea is feasible," he said smilingly. "There is nothing fantastic about the idea of a multiple balloon flight, and for my part I believe it is much less hazardous than an ascent with a single, large balloon." Revolver Used in Sky

Nevertheless, he had quite a time with his 92-balloon hitch. He had to shoot some of the balloons with a revolver on the way down so as to accelerate his descent. But even then, in avoiding landing in the Mississippi River at night, he came down in a ravine, and when he set off a blast of T.X.T. to destroy his remaining h«Uoone, the fla.rning debris showered down on his head and burned him about the face, neck and arms.

But the experiment demonstrated at least that one could get up and get down a lain by that means, and that is all it was intended to prove.

8y... George Pelletier

(Member National Aviation Editors' Association.) He blames the ravine for the fire damage. If he had been on flat ground when he landed and set off the T.X.T. charge, he told me, the balloons would •have fallen far in front of the basket in which he was standing instead of into it. Besides, there shouldn't have been any fire at all. Previous tests with T.X.T. has never ignited the balloons, he said. "But otherwise everything behaved very well," he recounted. Dr. Piceard is a gentleman who is not easily disconcerted. The major objectives are what count with him. "Some of the balloons which I cut loose with a knife got tangled up in the others at first, so instead I began to pull them close in toward me and stab them. "For more rapid descent I would pull in several at a time and stab them quickly one after the other. And to come down still faster I shot other balloons with a revolver." There's a technique in shooting small balloons so that they'll rip wide open and discharge their gas in an instant, he explained.

"If you shoot them in the middle they just laugh in your face. You've got to hit them on the side and slice them open to empty them fast. It'* easy with a little practice."

The scientist is actually enthusiastic about the prospects of his 2000-bfllloon "dog-team" flight, the most Jules Vernelike adventure since his twin brother, Professor Auguste Piceard, of Belgium, gave the world the skyscraper-high, carrot-shaped Piccard-tvpe balloon for high altitude work back in 1931, an:l tossed to popular science a new plaything —the stratosphere.

Dr. Jean says the Piccard type is "all done," and that his multiple-balloon craft, fantastic as it may seem, is the next necessary step in man's persistent attempt to wrest from the sky the secrets of the cosmic ray. "My brother agrees, too," he told me. "We correspond often on this subject of stratosphere flying, in which we have been interested for 15 or 20 years as chemists long before the world began to think of us as somewhat strange, long-haired fellows with an itch to grab at the moon."

Long-haired the Piccards are—twins indeed —alike in appearance, with gaunt, six-foot frames, slightly ' built and light of weight, with retreating foreheads and meticulous manners which mark them as men apart.

Tlie multiple-type balloon, the American twin insists, is the only type which can be relied on to reach heights of 100,000 feet or more with safety. Besides, the cost of the other type for an 18 or 20-mile ascension would be prohibitive. Balloon Hazards According to the Minnesota professor, tha limit of the Piccard-tjpe ballpon was reached back in 193.5, when the Xational Geographic Air Corps balloon, Explorer IT., of 3,700,000 cubic feet gas capacity, rose to the record height of 72.395 feet with Captains Albert W. Stevens and Orvil A. Anderson of the Army Air Corps, in irts sealed gondola.

Several incidents have shown the impracticability of trying to build still bigger single-balloon craft, he says. Among these was the hipping and collapse of Explorer IT. during the first attempt at inflation in the stratosphere bowl of the Black Hills of South Dakota. The accident was primarily due to the difficulty of handling thousands of square yards of fabric and hundreds of feet of rope during the delicate process of inflation. These difficulties would simply be exaggerated in a still larger bag. There was also the ripping of the Soviet balloon, Osoaviakhim 1., after a record flight in January, 1934, with the resultant death of its pilots, Paul Fedassejenko. Audrey Vessenko and Jlya Oussyskine, when their gondola came crashing to earth. They had risen to more than 72.000 feet, or 13.fi miles, their instruments showed, and they posthumously held the world record until the Stevens-Anderson flight.

Dr. Piecard speaks with personal knowledge of the utility of the Piecard type, for he holds the family reeord in the matter of going up. While Brother Augusta introduced the type, with its sealed gondola, and reached 51,775 feet in 1931 and 53,153 in 1932, Dr. Jean, with his wife, Jeanette, a former Philadelphia girl, and the only licensed woman balloon pilot in the United States, ascended to 57.570 feet in their own balloon at Detroit in October, 1934. New Method Is Cheaper This was the flight which convinced Dr. Jean that some new-type craft would have to be developed if new heights were to be reached and additional knowledge gained of the elusive cosmic rays. "With the craft I have in mind, all the balloons would have to burst in a single instant to get the dangerous result that a single rip in a big balloon would produce. I am confident that after I demonstrate its full practicability it will be adopted 1 by other scientists for research work at levels of 100.000 feet or more, where 99 per cent of the earth's atmosphere, or layer of air. is below you," he explained enthusiastically.

The balloons which Dr. Piccard intends to use are the regulation four-foot spheres which weather observers release daily and follow with theodolites to gauge accurately the directions and velocities of the winds at altitudes far aloft. They cost three or four dollars each, but would come still lower than that in quantities, Dr. Piccard says. He estimates he could get a supply of 2(100 balloons for about 5000 dollars, which is only a fraction of the cost of a single balloon of 2,000.000 or 3,000,000 cubic feet capacity. At high altitudes the little balloons expand into spheres fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter, depending upon the amount of original inflai oil at ground levels. "But even if they pop, nothing very sad can happen except a loss of altitude," Dr. Piccard explained. They would be hitched in two or three giant clusters, one above the other, and their individual inflation,

which is a one-man job, would be comparatively ensy. As he has clone in the past, Dr. Piceard purposes to "weigh off" the balloon by blasting the tie ropes holding it to the ground with charges of T.N.T. This method, paradoxical as it may Beem, keeps the delicate cosmic-ray telescopes intact — and Dr. Piccard's journey is primarily a scientific adventure. It is the modern substitute for the axe, by which the cardinal ropes are conventionally severed.

Incidentally, Dr. Piccard is going to use hydrogen gas for inflation, even though it has been frowned upon bv the lighter-than-air men since the Hindenburg disaster. But he has no fear of fire.

"When I slash them or shoot them, they break, but there is no lire. I don't think friction will cause them to burn, either."

As a final experiment before the big flight, Dr. Piccard is going to send up a cluster of 100 small balloons, without pilot, but with instruments attached, to see how they behave at really high altitudes. He can study them also with ground instruments which permit following a cluster for a distance of nearly a hundred miles. Mysterious Cosmic Rays The record height known to have been reached by a weather observation balloon is twenty-two miles, considerably higher than Dr. Piccard intends to get, but this experience is proof that the small spherical bags have possibilities. Once his preliminary instrument flight is made and the data" recorded for use on the 2000-ba llooji adventure, Dr. Piccard and his wife v. ill be off.

"You can take it from me that I'm neither a 'stunt' flyer nor a 'blind' pilot," lie said jokingly. "I know pretty well what I can do before 1 try it. I am going about this 'dog-team ascension, as you call it, with the same meticulous care which 1 would use in getting a certain resi.lt in the laboratory. F,\erv precaution that can be taken will be taken, and everything that can be done to insure success will be done."

Mrs. Piccard, who will accompany Dr. Piceanl on the flight, is American born, the daughter of the late Dr. John Ridlon, of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Ridlon, who now lives at Xewpor", R.I. She is a graduate of Brvn Mawr and met Dr. Piccard when he was an instructor at the University of Chicago and she was studying for a master's degree. Both are accomplished chemists, who have turned their joint efforts toward investigation of the cosmic ravs.

Not a Blind Adventure Both admit little is really known about these mysterious forces, which have drawn the attention and study of the world's foremost scientists, among them Dr. Robert Millikan, of the California Institute of Technology. "Xo one knows exactly what the cosn.\c ray is except that there is such a th.ng,">Dr. Piccard said. 'Tt may be electro-magnetic waves or speeding corpuscles of some sort." I asked him what he expected to gain then from the flights and there was a residue of the Philadelphian in his reply: "What did Benjamin Franklin expect to find when he flew a kite?" he retorted. "He knew there was electricity in the air, but what was he going to do about it?" That's just the answer you'll get anywhere a discuss ; —n starts on cosmic rays. The important thing just now is to get higher and higher, where their activiti are greater and surer and clearer data is obtainable. That's what Dr. Piccard hopes 'o do with his 2000 small balloons. That's the whole idea behind the "dog-team" flight that will get off a? soon as the balloons are ready and weather conditions are promising