THE TRAVELLING ROCKET

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7294, 2 August 1930, Page 11

THE TRAVELLING ROCKET

A VISIT TO THE MOON In a small Baltic bathing-place called Horst. Professor Oberth is engaged in putting the finishing touches to an exact model of the rocket in which he intends to visit the moon. Trials will begin as soon as the weather becomes favourable. The model rocket will be shot from 20 to 50 kilometres by the explosion of the -gas it contains, and the instruments concealed in it will record the composition of the atmos phere through which it travels. When the motors of the rocket are exhausted and the instruments have done their work an automatic parachute will open and bring the rocket back to the earth. Professor Oberth expects his model rocket to reveal secrets of the distant atmospheric regions on the surface of. the ocean of air at the bottom of which we are living, and whose depths has not yet been exactly registered The greatest height yet attained by an airplane is 18,000 metres, though bal-' loon sounders have reached a height of 35 kilometres. Professor Oberth expects his rocket, to reach a height of 100 kilometres, and if the trials prove successful the time will have come for the first human being to reach the moon.