FUTURE TRAVEL BY ROCKET TO THE MOON?

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 147, 6 June 1936, Page 15

FUTURE TRAVEL BY ROCKET TO THE MOON?

Prospect of Flights to the Stars that Dazzle the Imagination

HHEN a writer of some scientific attainment and grip of the technical detail of his subject sets out to show that flight away from the earth to the moon, to Mars, to Venus, or to other planets can be projected in the light of modern knowledge, the idle dream of the tale-teller gives way to fiery thoughts of possibilities.

A multitude of terrible difficulties faces the experimenter in interplanetary travel. It is not likely that even the first experimental journey outside the earth’s envelope of air will be made for many years, but Mr. P. E. Cleator, in “Rockets Through Space,” writes in terms pf modern scientific knowledge when he discusses the problem. He is so frank about what has to be learned and so careful not to overestimate what has been achieved that he compels attention. Rocket for Transport.

The use of terms like “astronautics," “astrogation” (even airmen still use the "marine term “navigation”), and “spaceship” are liable to cause derision. The fact that Mr. Cleator was the founder of the British Interplanetary Society in 1933 is liable to make one ask whether there is any subject under the sun on which a .society lias not been founded in Great Britain. But he proves his points so effectively that he recalls Galileo, who had his eyes put out for saying that the earth was round, or Columbus, who discovered America in trying to prove it, or Brunel, whose proposal to put a steamboat on the Thames was so laughed at that he could not get a room in an hotel in London, or Samuel Morse, who had to harangue 10 American Congresses before he could get his telegraphic system adopted, or Fokker, whose magnificent aeroplane designs were scorned by the British War Office and later were used with terrible effect against Hie British forces in the Great War. Mr. Cleator is not enthusiastic about rockets as a general means of transport. It may be safely asserted,” he says, “that the chance of rocket cars, ever becoming a common feature of ou highways .... is

so remote as hardly to call for serious consideration. The same . . . equally applies lo rocket propulsion on the sea and for low-altitude flying.' It is in atmospheres

of extreme tenuity or in vacuums, he claims, that the rocket deserves serious consideration. It has been proved that the rocket form of propulsion—that is propulsion by the recoil of explosions—provides its own motive power independent, of such outside aid as the resistance of the air or a surface on which to grip. If a rocket and its propulsive power—that is, fuel—could be brought within practicable limits the first great step in travel to the moon, Mars, or Venus would be solved. So far experiment in the use of rockets is in its primitive stages. Except for the fireworks toys of the Chinese and Greeks, the dangerous war weapons that began with the thirteenth century, and the ships’ rockets that have proved so romantic in aiding victims of wrecks, rockets had no real importance until they were equipped with liquid fuels. Liquid Fuels,

In this regal’d fireworks, ships" rockets, and the picturesque experiments made with rocket cars by Max Valier in the Opel works before he blew himself to pieces in 1930 are in the same category. Powder fuels are out of the question. Important experiments have been carried out with liquid fuels, says Mr. Cleator. It has been proved that the most efficient of rocket fuels comprises separate containers of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which when merged and fired in a common combustion chamber are capable of propelling the perfectly designed rocket at 9000 miles an hour. So far this rocket has not been made, although experimenters in Germany, Soviet Russia, Austria, Holland, and the United States (the British have clone nothing) have created rockets driven by liquid fuel which are as efficient in the way as was the Wright brothers’ aeroplane of 1907 when compared with the aeroplanes of to-day. When Mr. Cleator says that even the fuel would bo efficient enough only to transport a rocket ship weighing 20 tons and including four passengers into space outside the pull of the earth’s gravity (single fare, no return) and that the project would cost £20,000,000, he begins to face facts. But they are facts that dazzle the imagination.

Setting aside the fabulous cost, he sug;ests experimenting with a “three step" ocket weighing 5120 tons. The lowest ;i ep would comprise a shell of 640 tons.

containing 3840 tons of oxygen-hydrogen fuel. This would be “fired” and would be sufficient to impart to the rocket a velocity of two and a half miles a second on its journey directly away from the earth. The suicide crew of four would probably crash to death on the floor of their cabin unless special hammocks to ease the shock were fitted to guard against this. As soon as the lowest “step” finished its job it would be dropped, and the author suggests parachutes to prevent it from devastating a large tract of countryside when it arrived back on earth. The second “step,” weighing 80 tons and carrying 380 tons of fuel would then be “fired,” increasing the speed by two and a-half miles a second. When it was empty it would be dropped, leaving a third “step” of 80 tons careering into space. The third “step” would contain 60 tons of fuel, which would be sufficient to increase the speed of the “ship” to seven miles a Second, or 25,2000 miles an hour. That would be sufficient to force the remaining 20 tons outside the attraction of the earth’s gravity, after which, unless something serious were done about it. the four occupants would die from lack of air, lack of heat, and the inherent difficulties of living inside a small shell doomed to whirl about space for ever. Mr. Cleator, however, recognises the difficulties. He also points out the danger of being hit by a stray meteorite, even the smallest of which would cut through the strongest humanmade shell like paper. A further disaability would be that the human hearts of four passengers, accustomed by evolution to pumping large quantities of blood against the force of gravity, would then break every blood vessel in their respective bodies, and cause instant death. Pelion on Ossa. These are only the beginnings of the difficulties of “interplanetary transport,” Pelion could be piled on Ossa. Even if one reached the moon (238,840 miles) there would be no air there, and the famous craters and valleys would be covered with volcanic ash. If one reached Mars, the nearest of the planets and the one most beloved of “interplanetary” fiction writers, it would be a question of living, at the best, In conditions resembling those on the summit of Mount Everest. No one in human knowledge has so far done that outside a lew short aeroplane flights.