A SCHEME FOE CONSTRUCTING- AIR STEAMERS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2101, 17 November 1880, Page 4

A SCHEME FOE CONSTRUCTING- AIR STEAMERS.

The proposition of come intending Arctic explorers to use balloons in seeking the North Pdo appears to have recently stimulated aeronauts to devise new methods of aerostation. The eminent French scientist, M. Da Fonvielle, has just communicated to the scientific world two aeronautical contrivances, which are perhaps the most promising of the many ingenious devices for propelling and directing balloons that have ever been projected. One of these is the work cf .M. Gabriel Yon, who, on the high endorsement of DeFonvielle, is “ the most qualified aeronaut' for working out the great problem,” having -witnessed all the great aeronautical constructions of the nge, and was the pupil of the now celebrated Giffard. In M. Yen’s balloon a steam engine is to be employed to drive the propeller, and the gas of the balloon used as fuel in proportion to the loss of weight ' from nncondeneed steam or by consumption cf petroleum, the chief fuel depended on. The details of this steam machinery and its aerostatic values are not given, but tho great experience of its author in ballooning and his acquaintance with tho difficulties to be overcome in driving and directing an air ship -entitle it to favourable consideration. The ether scheme is proposed by Mr Pearse, of Bristol, whose invention differs from Yon’s principally in using a gas engine for propel'ling the aerial machine. “ Although,” says M. De Fonvielle, “it is impossible to suppose that the aerial carriage of Mr Pearse or the directing balloon of M. Yon can possibly bring aeronauts to the Nort Pole for their inaugural trip, they may bo instrumental in eliciting useful facts.” Not to discuss the relative merits of these schemes, a little re"flection will dispel the idea which some entertain that an air ship can be made to plough through the waves of the atmospheric ocean. The immense surface opposed by an inflated balloon to tho high winds of the upper atmosphere, so long as balloons are floated by gas, will always create a resistance far beyond the power of any steam or gas engine which the. balloon can lift to overcome. The velocities of the upper air currents by frequent observation range between fifty and one hundred and twenty miles, and are sometimes one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and it is clear that if the aerostat were supplied with engines even of proportionate horse power with those of an ocean steamship, the aeronaut, could not choose his course or force his way in mid-air. No ocean steamer afloat could make headway against such wind forces, much less could any aerial steamer constructed on ary of the aerostatic models now known. An air ship armed with tho largest steam engine it could lift, in an encounter with these tremendous - forces would be as helpless as a waif on the Niagara torrents. But there is notwithstanding a sphere which is open to tho invention of M. Yon, should it prove a mechanical success. If he can construct a balloon to utilise the winds of the lower atmosphere, with propelling power sufficient to drive it through calm spaces in a required direction, even (hough out a few miles at a time were traversed, it is obvious an Arctic exploration . could be pushed by repeated ascents to very high latitudes, and possibly to the pole itself. Could Captain Nares in 1875, when within four hundred or five hundred miles of the Pole, have been supplied with a Yon balloon he might have far exceeded the high latitude he reached. But the chief problem would be to contrive a balloon that would carry fuel . enough for so long a voyage in the air, and it remains to be seen whether the French . aeronautic engineer can solve this problem.