ACROSS THE ATLANTIC BY BALLOON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11685, 21 June 1901, Page 6

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC BY BALLOON.

A DARING UNDERTAKING

Crossing the Atlantic in a balloon is a thing more easily talked about than done; yet the man has at length come forward who is bold enough to attempt the task.

M. Louis Godard is bis name, and he is an aeronaut by profession, his experience of balloons extending over a period of eight-and-twentv years.

M. Godard has long been known as one of the most daring and original of aeronauts. and is one of the most prominent members of the Paris Hva.i Club, which ha.? promoted ballooning to the dignity of a fashionable sport. * " I feel as if I had been born in a balloon." said M. Godard. lately, "so thoroughly at home do I feel in the air. A journey in a balloon does not provoke the least emotion of fear in me. Why should it? In travelling through the air you are not beset with terrestrial obstacles."

The daring aeronaut proposes to start from New York, and, basing his calculations on long experience, expects that the entire voyage to Europe will take about four days. The voyage will not be inexpensive, "for the cost is, estimated at £8000. To defray part of this M. Godard hopes to carry half a dozen passengers with him. It will be interesting to hear how many people are willing to pay £1009. say, for the privilege of running a good chance of being blown to the North Pole by an adverse wind encountered in mid-Atlantic.

As a matter of fact, it is said that nearly every member of the JEro Club, incited by the hope of being one of the first to make the transoceanic trip through the air, is willing to accompany M. Godard. A BALLOON WITH SATKLLITF.S. The aeronaut will not use an ordinary balloon for the voyage; but one similar to that he called La France, with which he once offered to set out in search of the other daring air-sailor, Andree. it was a huge balloon, the principal feature being that eight reservoir balloons were arranged round the equator of the big one. The gas stored in these reservoir satellites, so to speak, can be admitted into the big balloon by means of a system of ropes and valves worked from the car.

It is claimed that by this means a balloon can be kept in the air for sixty days together, and travel 15.000 miles without alighting to renew its supply of gas. With regard to M. Godard's estimate of the voyage, it is probably based on the longest balloon journey on record, a. race in which he himself took wart, but was beaten. That was last October, when the members of the JEro Club ascended from Paris and raced for the club's grand prize, to be awarded to the balloon which floated the longest distance.

Count Henri de la Vauix and Count de Castillon de Saint-Victor travelled without descending, in the former's balloon, the Centaure, to Korostieker, in Russia, a distance of 1153 miles a,s the crows dies, the journey taking 35| hours. M. Godard will take three expert aeronauts with him, besides half a dozen passengers, and he expects to land somewhere in the South of France.