LANDS TO CONQUER

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1934, Page 7

LANDS TO CONQUER

THE EXPLORER'S DREAM

ABOVE AND BELOW

To be the first human being to look on hitherto undiscovered lauds. That is the explorer's dream, to realise which he risks his life, writes H. C. McKay in the Sydney "Telegraph."

"I am going south again," says Polar explorer Ellsworth from New York. "Tho chance of unveiling a continent —for the last time in human history—still exists."

He refers to the fact that the extent aud boundaries of Antarctica, the earth's seventh continent, are unknown. He wants to be the first to visit the unmapped portion of that icy waste. Just for the sheer joy. of doing what no one else has done before.

But such daring spirits will soon have to seek new fields. The earth's unexplored territory shrinks yearly.

A fair slice of Brazil, much of Antarctica, a piece of Australia, a dwindling bit of Central Asia, patches of Africa, and some Pacific islands (including a tract of Nqw Guinea) remain. The North and South Poles have both been attained; unknown Arabia has recently been '-criss-crossed; "llysterious Tibet" is a mystery no longer; Soviet Russia has explored the unknown Caucasus; the forgotten Asia of Marco Polo has been re. visited by Americans. Timbuktu is no longer a legend; and there is a. municipal council in the dream city of Samarkand.

In a few years aviators will photograph the last hidden corners of the earth._ Sydney citizens will then tune them in on television or radio movies, yawn "Confound this travel" stuff!" and shift the dial to a football match or,a musical comedy in natural colour. How will the explorer fare? WHAT REMAINS. So far man has only plotted out the surface of the globe he crawls upon. There Temain the depths of the sea, the bowels of the earth, the upper air, the moon, the planets, and the stars. Pioneers in these new realms there are already. Piccard, the first man' to reach the stratosphere, has achieved lasting fame. Now it has become a race—"Who will bo first to reach the altospherc?" The altosphere, twenty miles up, that queer region where tho air becomes warm, where our wireless signals arc bent and reflected, and where tho ozone girdle is spread. The old bogey of freezing in the "pitiless cold of space" has gone. If tho space-rocket travels in sunlight, the job will bo to keep the explorers cool as the unhampered sunrays strike the metal cabin of their ship.. But all the old frenzy and exultation of Columbus will live again in the first traveller who returns alive from Venus or Mars. This will be a "first" far overshadowing the discovery of America, Now Holland, or the North and South Poles!

With movies (maybe talkies) made on the planet, and with "specimens" to show (perhaps living creatures), the spaco-tanned hero, as he steps from his space-ship as it parachutes to earth, will get a thrill eclipsing all the travellers' tales of ancient romance.

Tho explorers of these new realms take their lives in their hands. The ozone layer, thin as a sheet of paper, is believed to screen off ultra-violet sunrays, which may bo lethal. The first air-explorer to reach the ozone may not return alive. As for risks, the illfated Russians in the Sirius discovered another when they broke the altitude record at cost of their lives all because, to anticipate tho American venture, they ascended in winter. THE SEA ALSO. There is also tho sea. It contains "deeps"—deeper in proportion than Mount Everest is high. No one has* ever been there. The lowest authenticated depth reached is the 2200. feet of Dr. W. Beebe, naturalist, in a diving bell. Dr. H. Hartman claims to have been down 2500 feet in tho Mediterranean. These depths are trifling compared with the big Pacific Ocean "holes"—Emden Deep (6.3 miles), Swiro Deep (six miles), Tuscarora Deep (28,000 feet). The vast.bed of the Pacific, apart from these pits; is a huge submarine country awaiting a Columbus.

Jules Verne's hero, who made an attempt to get to the "centre of the earth" and ended by being tossed up out of a. volcano, has had few emulators in real life. But getting to tho earth's centre, 4000 miles clown, is an expensive venture. A shaft, sunk twelve miles deep, would cost ten millions, it is said. The farthest a human being has ever been is in a mine, over a mile deep, though a bore has been put down to 8000 ft.

Pioneer of moon travel—Otto Fischer. 32,000 feet in a rocket at Eugcn (on the Baltic), November, 1933.

Fischer, first to survive such an ascent, has gained temporary fame. Who will be first to travel by rocket to the moon or Mars?

For the feat is not impossible. Like aviation in tho nineteenth century, planetary exploration awaits an engine and a fuel. Just as the petrol motor solved the problem of atmospheric .flight, so a new motor must open up the exploration of space.

Tho International cabla news appearing In this issue la published by arrangement with the Australian Press Association and tas "Sun," "Herald," News Office, Limited.