LANDS TO CONQUER

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 May 1934, Page 11

LANDS TO CONQUER

THE EXPLORER’S DREAM. To be the first human being to look on hitherto undiscovered lands. 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. “The chance of unveiling a continent —for the last time in human history—still exists.” He refers to the fact that the extent and 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 New Guinea) remain. The North and South Poles have both been attained; unknown Arabia has recently been crisscrossed ; “Mysterious Tibet’ is a mystery no longer; Soviet Russia has explored the unknown Caucasus; the forgotten Asia of Carco Polo has been revisited by Americans. Timbuktu is no longer a legend and there is a municipal council in the drcam 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!” add shift the dial to a football match or a musical comedy in natural colour. How will the explorer fare?

’ - WHAT REMAINS. i So far man has only plotted out the surface of the globe he crawls upon. There remain 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 be first to reach the altosphere?” The altosphere, 20 miles up. that queer region where the air becomes warm, where our wireless signals are beat and reflected, and where the ozone girdle is spread. The old bogev of freezing in the “pitiless cold of space” has- gone. If the space-rocket travels in sunlight, the job will be to keep the explorers I cool as the unhampered sunrays strike I 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. New Holland, or the Ndrth ami South Poles! With movies (maybe talkies) made on the planet, and with “specimens” to show (perhaps living creatures), the space-tanned hero, as he steps from his space-ship as it parachut.es to earth. will get a thrill eclipsing all the Haveners' tales, of ancient romance.. The 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 the ultraviolet sunrays, which may be lethal. The first air-explorer to reach the ozone may not return alive. As for risks, [he ill-fated Russians in the Sirius discovered another when they broke the altitude record at the cost of their lives —all because, to anticipate the American venture, they ascended in winter. THE SEA ALSO. There is also the sea. It contains “deeps"—deeper in proportion than Mount. Everest is high. No one has ever been there. The lowest authen-

ticated 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 the Mediterranean. These depths are trifling compared with the big Pacific Ocean, “holes’’ —Emden Deep (6.3 miles), Swire Deep (six miles), Tuscarora Deep (25,000 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 the earth’s centre, 4000 miles down, is an expensive venture. A shaft, sunk 12 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 SOOOft. Pioneer of moon travel —Otto Fischer. 32,000 feet in a rocket at Rugen (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 the 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.