AIRSHIP OR AEROPLANE?

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 70, 15 December 1928, Page 26

AIRSHIP OR AEROPLANE?

THE TWO COMPARED

What are the possibilities of international or Inter-State airship services in the near future? (asks the Melbourne “Age”). The recent Hight of the Giat Zeppelin across the Atlantic has again turned attention to this question. In the opinion of those whose business it Is to watch developments of the sort on behalf of Australia, the chances of flying to Sydney or Brisbane aboard some Leviathan of the air in this generation are remote. The outlook for international travel by airship is considerably brighter. The aeroplane is heavy and steady, but the “blimp must always be built for lightness. In its delicate tracery of duralumin spars, none of them thicker than a man s arm, it is a miracle of engineering skill, the human counterpart of the spiders web, but of what use is a spider’s web when a feather duster brushes it? Possibly nobody in Australia is competent to express a weighty opinion on the potentialities of the airship. What little is known about these craft is largely in the bands and heads of the Germans. There are many knotty problems to be overcome. For instance, what increase in strains and stresses will be set up as the result of increasing speed from 75 miles an hour (which airships have not exceeded in the past) to 100 miles is entirely in realms of conjecture, for no useful tests can be made which might, shed light on the problem. The airship, much more than the aeroplane, is dependent on the meteorologist. The ’plane can meet a hurricane of 100 miles an hour with little more strain than would be set up in still air. It may literally stand still in mid air. iiniihle to make head way, but while it is doing so it is coming to no harm. On the other hand any violent disturbance such as a typhoon is likely to shatter the strongest

airship ever built. But with timely forewarning an airship should t-tu ally be able to avoid the worst storm centres.

Certainly not until 1931 will airships make the attempt from England to Australia. ■' Much will depend on the trials of the two super-airships Kioo and RlOl. which are now pearing completion in England. Test Hights ou shorter routes, i.e.. from England to Egvpt. and from Egypt to Karachi and Natal, must come before the Australian flight is attempted. With t.u=-e satisfactorily accomplished Australia will probably be asked to participate in the trials to this country. Meanwhile valuable data as to the behavious of airships in similar conditions Will doubtless have been gleaned from the Spaniards, who will shortly inaugurate trans-Atlantic services to Brazil and the Argentine, using Ger-man-made eraft for the purpose. Hie question of initial cost alone renders the airship impracticable for interstate transport, it is understood that the combined Inclusive cost of the RlOO and RlOl will be £1,000,009. The safest gas for airships, because noninflammable, is helium, which is found in commercial quantities only in the United States. Regular airship services here would have to make use of hydrogen, an inflammable gas. which would greatly increase the risks of travel- 11 is i‘ n axiom in aviation practice that for distances under 5000 miles the airship cannot rival the aeroplane. It is at greater distances that the lighter-than-alr machine comes into its own. But whether engineers will be able to build into its slender struts sufficient strength to withstand the furious onslaught of a roaring hurricane remains to be seen. Australia will watch developments carefully. But though Cabinet has already indicated its interest iu the subject. there is slight prospect that in Hie next few years the Commonwealth will take anything more than a watching role in the evolution of the airship