FLIGHT IN ROCKET

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 265, 4 August 1932, Page 9

FLIGHT IN ROCKET

Australia-New Zealand AMBITIOUS PROJECT A Shattered Dream By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Rec. August 3, 10.55 p.m.) Sydney, August 8. An explosion in a garage at Roseville shattered for the time being the dream of two men, Kenneth Foreman and Ernest Fraser, who hoped to ny to New Zealand in a rocket. The men are stated to have been experimenting on explosive propulsion for a number of years, and on perfecting a small, model, that was destroyed, intended to build a man-size rocket to cross the Tasman. Their first model, fired from Wollongong, landed wltnin six feet of the chosen spot on one of five islands three and a half miles away, so Mr. Foreman claims. Mr. Fraser, whose eyebrows were burned off, explained the ambitious proposal. He said that the rocket craft was to be propelled at 600 miles an hour through the stratosphere at a height of 60,000 feet. The designer of the rocket and Inventor of the propelling mixture was a science master at a country high school, who nad been studying Herr Opel's work with rockets and rocket-driven cars. “When the rocket leaves for New Zealand,” Mr. Fraser added, “the occupant will breathe from special air containers and through thick plateglass windows will see the entire North Island and part of the South Island as far as Christchurch from his vantage point as the rocket hurtles toward its goal. When within 100 miles of New Zealand the rocket will be deflected downwards, the propelling mixture will be reduced, and the pilot will descend by parachute. The rocket, instead of careering to destruction, will be brought to earth by means of a time mechanism and parachute automatically operated.” Messrs. Foreman and Fraser are regarded as men of substance and unusual inventive ability.