300 MILES AN HOUR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19219, 9 July 1924, Page 4

300 MILES AN HOUR.

Bv Harry Harper, in the Daily Chronicle. 'Virtually a new science, profoundly significant! Such is the research which now begins to tell ns things vre never knew before about vast, lonely stretches of the upper air. Time being measured out to us, inexorably, in seconds, minutes, hours, and days, all we can hope for, if we are to get more done —as all of us wish to do—in any given period cf time, is to move still more swiftly when travelling long distances. And the importance of the new quest is this. Vast high-altitude winds, when they are charted, and huge, specially-designed winged machines navigate them, promise the world its most wonderful “ speed-way. Airmen, who have flown already to great exploring heights, are preparing to go higher still. Only the day, circling up and up, a pilot till ho entered a great windstream winch lie estimated to have been rushing at nearly three miles a minute! —Six Miles High.— A little while ago, too, a small, pilot-, less balloon, carrying self-recording instruments, came down from an aerial “ sounding ” six miles high showing that it had been in a high-altitude hurricane blowing at a speed more than twice that of the greatest ever experienced at ground level. Tremendous gales of the upper a i r _great, hitherto uncharted “ windways I *”— exist indubitably, and “ soundings” are now being made, on an organised scale, from many observing stations. Sometimes balloons .with their instruments reach heights almost incredible. One, for example, has come down with the record of having ascended till it was more than 20 miles above the surface of the earth. . Science is, in fact, busy with researches which, by adapting aeroplanes so that they take advantage of immense winds blowing miles above our heads at enormous speed, may give us the power ot moving a thousand miles in the same time as, previously, we have spent in travelling a hundred. —Currents of the Upper Air.— This much, already, seems reasonably clear. From North America, towards ’Europe, there is a great wind-stream setting from west to east, and—some experts now believe —attaining at heights greater than our highest mountains a velocity several limes that of the fastest train. Then, plotted out tentatively there seems another current of the upper air which, sweeping down past the coast of Spain, curves thence into the Atlantic, and rushes across the great waste of waters till it nears the Cull of Mexico. Super-express air traffic westwardbound from Europe will, therefore, after climbing till it is lost to sight of earthfolk, swing down and make its crossing to the Americas by the “ wind-way which will bring it to a landing, say, at Key West; while craft working eastward from New York, and bound for London and great cit’es beyond, will rise in a swift, mighty climb'till they are in that favouring wind which will bear them on its wings at a speed three times greater than their normal rate of travel. Surely this is almost the final marvel! This taking of a machine which moves already at a speed more than twice that of swift earth transport, and so directing the pilot that Ire sends it soaring into a great favouring air current in motion at several miles a minute, and which—when the speed of the machine itself is added to that of the air-stream in which it is immersed —gives a rate of travel over the face of-Hie earth of as much as 500 miles an hour!