RADAR TO PLANETS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 5

RADAR TO PLANETS

TRIPS TO THE MOON

A SCIENTIST'S OPINION

O.C. SYDNEY, August 27. A British scientist on loan to Australia believes that as a result of the war man may set foot on the moon far sooner than the most optimistic scientists had believed possible. He is Dr. E. C. Bowen, who with Dr. A. F. Wilkins, built and demonstrated in secrecy the world's first radar on the east coast of England in June, 1935.' The British Government made him available to the Australian Government after Japan entered the war and he is acting director of the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Dr. Bowen says inter-steliar naviga- j tion is certainly coming, by means of a combination of radar and the release of atomic energy. He envisages a rocket-ship driven by atomic energy and guided by radar. "In the next five years we should have a radar powerful enough to send an impulse to the sun and the moon,' he said. "We should get an echo from the moon in 2£ seconds and the sun in 16 minutes and we will be able to measure their distances exactly. "Development of atom-splitting will make rocket propulsion to the moon equally possible. "A responsible organisation, the British Interplanetary Society, has completed designs for a space ship and 'plans to raise £200,000 to build it."