"SAFETY FIRST"

Northern Advocate, 25 November 1925, Page 12

"SAFETY FIRST"

IN AERONAUTICS,

SCIENTIST'S VIEWS,

Mr R. V. Southwell, discussing at the recent meeting of the British Association some aeronautical problems of the past and the future, said the future of aeronautics was in our hands to make or mar, because practically the whole of aeronautical research and development was financed and directed by the Government. In aeronautics, which had never yet paid its way, but grew in the artificial atmosphere of Government subsidy, much time and money might be wasted before the fact became glaringly apparent. Many well-disposed but less wellinformed people, especially in Parliament, seemed to imagine that progress in aeronautics was a question first and last of money; that technical advances was a mercantile commodity purchasable at a definite amount per £1000. No view could be more fallacious. Unless our programmes of research and development were well conceived, aiming at the solution of definitely formulated problems, additional money would do us more harm than good. It was pleasant to feel assured of a favcurj able hearing when we asked for money, [ but remembering that we had as yet Ino economic touchstone by which to | test our schemes, we ought to subject j them to criticism all the more ruthless I on that account, to make sure that we t 7 J had ideas which we needed money to | develop, rather than to ask for money jas a preliminary to formulating our ideas. Discussing the value of public opinion in its relation to the provision of Government funds, he said that for aeronautics it was not merely a matter for benevolent interest that public opinion should be well informed: it might well prove to be an essential j condition of its own satisfactory pro- | gress. Those whose time was spent 011 aeronautical research could not afford to regard with complacency public opinion in which speed was held to be more important than reliability. It was better business to proceed steadily with the building of a craft which would fly to India than to talk about non-stop flights to New Zealand. What aeronautics needed most of all was to settle down to steady progress along natural { lines of development. No other pass r ! would lead them surely to success in the future, and very few of the "stunt" predictions of the day 011 examination gave any real promise of important advance. Passing 011 to deal with the helicopter, he said that if any Government really wanted to develop a helicopter he saw no reason why it should not have its desire, provided only that it ' adopted a. reasonable procecdure for j getting it, which was not that of the ! prize competition. The problem of stability must be attacked by systematic reasearch before anything could be hoped of the helicopter. Such research ought not to be financed by, and therefore kept secret for, the private inventor. If the helicopter had a military importance the knowledge attained would be of national interest and provision slipuld be made accordingly. If there was any future for the helicopter (of which he personally was not convinced) it was a problem which should be referred to the research committee and to the professional designer. Per- 1 sonally he did not believe that the I helicopter was a form of aircraft that ! would prove to have much military ' value. He thought that the high-speed aeroplane, unlike the helicopter, was a suitable subject for prize competition. PROBLEM OF "CLEAN" DESIGN Year by year the best designing firms in the country should be induced to bring all their knowledge and experience to bear on the problem of "clean" design., So far as possible j every restriction which made the prob- j lem more difficult should be removed, j The designer should not have to com- 1 plain, as he had at present, that when I he had built an aeroplane of "clean" J design and was counting 011 something j striking from its speed trials, suddenly j a host of experts descended on the J helpless craft and bedecked it with ar- j mament, wireless and other "gad- 1 gets," until it made its first ascent "looking like a flying Christmas tree." The way to discover the limits of possibility in high speed was to go for high speed " baldlieaded." Of course, any aeroplane required for service would have to sacrifice some of its otherwise attainable speed to the needs of armament or wireless, but that wn? no reason for making those sacrifices in an experimental machine. Rather the reverse. ' Safety, comfort and reliability wore the true essentials in civil aviation. Until these could be guaranteed it would have attractions only for the few. High speed militated against all three of these essentials, beside being < very costly. The lower we could afford to make the top speed of an aeroplane the lower would be its landing speed, 011 which primarily safety depended. An air speed of anything over .SO miles per hour would suffice to achieve a saving of time over other forms of transport. Indeed, the aeroplane or airship once established as economic and reliable would have hardly a competitor. Was not then research justified in its policy of placing safety first—in seeking to satisfy rather than to create a demand' Hi l characterised as the wildest of all aeronautical predictions those which told of the giant aeroplane. He did not say we had reached a limit, in respect of size of aeroplanes, new materials, new principles of construction, and, above all, new types ol: engine, but it was idle to talk gaily of size as an advantage which nothing but our ignorance withheld from our grasp to day.

We must take no unnecessary risk in planning the airships with which wc hoped to fly to India in 1927. We must design by theory, and in these largor airships we could employ a type of construction which lent itself better to theoretical treatment. We must develop afresh the technique of girder construction, and by using stouter material we could employ more of the experience we had already gained. He wished the public could be induced to regard this airship construction as a. great adventure, for that was what it was. The goal was the ability to fly to India, in comfort and without change in the space of 100 hours; the problem

was to design and construct a ship of vast capacity with little help from past experience, by sheer hard think* ing and hard work. Having embarked ill Britain 011 a definite programme two large ships, surely common sens© suggested that we ought for the next two years to leave the design staffs in peace to do their best, and that sileneo on their part while their plans developed was a mark of health.