FUTURE AIRCRAFT.

Mataura Ensign, 3 May 1919, Page 6

FUTURE AIRCRAFT.

COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS. TUB GOVERNING FACTORS. It is a simple matter, says an English writer, to predied the lines of development widen will probably ho followed in the immediate future of aeroplanes. Aerial “joy-tides” and shortrange mail and passenger services will undoubtedly be in operation during the present year. Indeed, ir, is not difficult to forecast with fair accuracy the maximum performance which can be anticipated from aeroplanes designed upon present principles. Technically, it is an accepted fact that an aeroplane cannot be produced, capable of transporting a commercially adequate load for a longer non-stop flight than 1 ,UUO miles; further, that for practical purposes 500. SGO miles should be regarded as the workable limit. The present prospects and future potentialities of airships, however, arc much less easy to diagnose. So much more depends upon capital in the case of airships. One has to consider the question of eommcreial airship enterprises in terms of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Ir. is recognised that rigid airships of to-day can fly lor distances ol 2,51)0 miles carmine: a commercial load of approximately. 15 tons; that every increase in the size of airships is accompanied by greater relative efficiency; and that ah’ships are enabled to undertake lung flights impossible of attainment by aeroplanes. Bhd the difficulty is to discover the manner in which airshins cun immediately he put to profitable use on a comparatively modest scale, in order to gam experience prior to embarking cm extensive schemes of inter-continental airship transport.. Obviously j.he ideal plan would he for the authorities to prepare the way for commercial enterprise by conducting demonstration flights and investigating tin* practical problems in relation io the use of airships over various routes, especially those passing through the tropics. The clients of a tropical climate on airship fabrics is a question which demands early solution. So far as meteorology is concerned, undoubtedly official action will lie taken fo furnish the necessary information. This is a facier vital to the success of uir_ tram-port.

.Larking Slate assistance, the alternative method of obtaining preliminary experience would he to establish mail or passenger services with nonrigid airships. Although nothing lias vet been heard of any proposal of this kind it would appear that mediumsized airships have greater advantages than is generally supposed. For example. the “North Sea” class .of airship of 500 h.p., is capable of transporting a load of more than three tons, whereas the Handley-Page four-engined giant aeroplane of !,10() h.p, is able to lift something less than four tons, ami has obviously considerably more than double the rate of petrol consumption. The predominant factor governing the development and u>e of airships is the need for big capital. If airship commercial services were to be organised in such a manner that many different trips by non-rigids were" run from a. central station, transport rates could be made cheaper than by the use of aeroplanes. There is little- doubt that those who get in “on the ground floor” of airship enterprise to-day, will reap rich rewards when the time arrives for airship companies to secure contracts for carrying the Empire’s mails.