M. SANTOS-DUMONT’S AIRSHIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1672, 16 March 1904, Page 48 (Supplement)

M. SANTOS-DUMONT’S AIRSHIP.

M. Santos-Dumont’s latest idea is of an unexpected kind. He talks of giving up, for the time being at all events, airship experiments, and returning to aeronautics of the' oldfashioned sort. His airship No. 10, which was to have carried 14 passengers to Trouville one of these days, is now to be turned into an. ordinary balloon. The long bamboo framework is to be removed, and the vessel will be provided with no propelling power, properly so called.

A basket car of the old type, such as spherical balloons take up, will be attached to the huge cigar of 2010 cubic metres capacity. M. Santos-Dumont will, naturally, not attempt aerial navigation in the strict sense of the word in his balloon, which will possess neither propellers nor rudder. But he means to experiment with regard to directing the vessel in a vertical, not an horizontal plane. For this purpose two small motors will work horizontal screws on the sides of the car. A special mechanism will be fitted to prevent the two screws

revolving at different rates of speed, which might happen if the pressure or the wind was irregular, and which would produce a rotatory motion of the balloon. The atronaut hopes to succeed in directing his vessel upwards or downwards at will, and thus to have the means of steering his course effectually bv choosing whichever atmospheric current happens to be blowing the way he wants to go. In fact ,his idea is now to perfect the old methods of ballooning and he calls his two horizontal screws “ballasting propeller*."