ROCKET PROPULSION

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 122, 25 May 1928, Page 9

ROCKET PROPULSION

, » : , APPLIED TO AVIATION CLAIMS FOR GERMAN DEVICE Australian. Press Association. BERLIN, 23ra May. .When Herr Opel took his seat in liis rocket car in the official trial at the Avus racecourse, his head was just projecting. Under a roar like a broadside from a cruiser the car shot off like a flash, spitting tongues of fire from the rear, and disappeared in clonds of thick smoke and black flakes.. Then it shot forward at a speed of 112 miles an hour, as each roar portended the explosion of a rocket. It was not an. attempt to break the speed record. The idea was to demonstrate tho successful application of the principle, the whole future of which is in the air, not on the ground. To travel at a height of twenty miles at a speed of 700 miles per hour and tho circumnavigation of the earth in a day are among Opel's, concrete proposals. He says it will not be -long before 'the nations will be competing for the development of rocket aviation. Two thousand spectators were thrilled and alarmed. The president of German scientific research said: "Wo are perhaps standing at the turning point of world communication."