TO THE STARS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 163, 25 June 1928, Page 4

TO THE STARS

» BERLIN message makes mention to-day of the disaster which befel a driverless car propelled by the newly devised “rocket-power.” A first trial had achieved a speed of 159 miles an hour, and it was upon an attempt to improve on this that calamity awaited. It is not, however, at all likely that this mishap will dissuade from farther experiment, wmcfi may in the end prouuce practical results. An eminent french scientist and pioneer in aviation, M. Ksnault-Feltrie, has recently been writing witn regard to the probaole improvements that will be made in aeroplane engines, and he loresees the time when the world will be circled in a hundred hours. These new engines, he says, will be as simple in build as it is possible to make them. Aeroplanes will be fitted with a great number of these engines, so that there will be no danger from a break-down on the part of one of them. They will be extremely light, not more than half-a-pound per horse-power, and the fuel consumption will be reduced by one-third, or even one-half, of what it is at present. This will make an enormous difference to flying and to the number of passengers or weight of cargo that can be carried. This French scientist has also something to say with regard to what he calls astro-nautics, that is to say, the much discussed problem of inter-planetary travel. On this point he expresses a belief that within the next three years man will fly in a rocket, not in an aeroplane, up to a height of at least a hundred miles from the earth’s surface, so getting beyond the earth’s atmosphere. It is, however, a somewhat disturbing reservation that he admits there may be some difficulty in getting back to earth again. But even this important part of the problem he hopes to see solved. The possibility of reaching a height of 100 miles will enable astronomers to know with great accuracy the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Mars and of Venus, and we shall be able to know to the flow of electrons which the sun sends out, which knowledge is of very great importance. The greatest possibility of the future, however, is inter-planetary travel. “If,” says the French scientist, “the disintegration of the atom becomes possible in the next 30 years, so will inter-planetary travel. But I wish to insist that 1 cannot say whether or not this will be the case. The brain that will discover the secret may exist to-day, may reveal it in three years, or in 30 years, or even three centuries may elapse before the secret is found. We know that disintegration of atoms takes place in radiuni, for instance, but we can neither stop it nor at any rate control it; it goes on automatically. But the day that mankind has discovered how to disintegrate the atom the greatest revolution wo can conceive will have taken place.”