An Aerial Steamship.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11698, 13 December 1899, Page 1

An Aerial Steamship.

M^toß Baden-Poavi£ll, writiny to tho Times, sajs:— Having lately hid tho opportunity of inspecting the va3t contrivanco now being." made in Germany,"' which ig sxpected shordy to plough i!h way through the realm? of the aii even : b the Atlantic liner glides ovor tho waters, I may, perhaps, be allowed orice uioro to call attention to tho great importance of tho advent of suvh u:i innovation. Through the kindius? of General Count; Zeppelin, I wis a'l .w»l to vhit l' a ' dockyard" whertin this wonderful b\u\, is beiug constructed, and wa* iramei.s : ly impressed on entering the greit wooden building erected on a floating raft to see what appeared to be the. slender skeleton of some huge vessel, as big as one of our moat powerful battleships, but of such delicate material as-rather to suggest a stupendous bird cage. Thi<, made entirely of aliuminium, is the framework on which the outer skin js to bestretcheel fneido a number of largo balloons will be placed. Underneath are the gallery and ibo cars, all of aluminium, and here are the engines with which to drive the vessel it is ioped, at the rate of 22 miles an hour through the air. The total lifiiag cipacity will be about 10 tons, which should enable the vessel to carry Buffi-> cient stores and ballast to remain in the Hir for some days All thi« may sound like some dream, but it is stem reality. It 13 said that altogether something like £70,000 has been spent upon il, and a commission, including many of the lead' ing scientific experts of Germany, have approved the plans. In a "few weeks' t me al' thould be reacy t'or«a start, and, though accidents and delays may, of course, happen in connection with such a novel undertaking, much is expected from this event, since such an amount of money and bkill has never before been expended on such an enterprise, and all the calculations have been so accurately made, evrry contingency go carefully considered, each possibility of failure so cautiously guarded against, that we on but hope that success will follow. A buoyant balloon, such as this, it may be pointed out, ha? the great advantage over a puiely mechanical flying machine (such as that of Maxim or Langley), of being able to rise with certainty off the ground, and of preserving its balance when in mid-air. Wehavejuat recently hid an unfortunate instance of lbs extreme difficulty of preserving this la'.ance even in a small flying machine (I myself having been a witness of this most regrettable event.) In the case of a machine lighter than the displaced air these uncertainties are done away with, and the whole question becomes one of speed. Twenty-two miles an hour is, perhapf, no great rate as compared to that of the winds which have to be surmounted, but it is aufH'cieut to accom pli:h a great deal. Given a practical/ airship, and -improvements are bound to. follow. And what then ? Notwithstand- , ing what peace conferences may deoida, wars in the future will, without doubt) be decided in the air. Tin plateaus of the Pamirs, the defiles of the North-west Frontier, the swamps of the Tipper Nile —even Mafeking and the tablelands of the Transvaal — will become as accessible as New York. The exploration of the} North and South Polea — but I will not speculate. Those wishing for visions of the future can refer to Jules Verne. 1 ho3Q that desire technical details of this latest scheme to utilise the highway of the air may find them in the' Aeronautical Joum-il for tbij month. I will here only •:inct. attention to what we may call the political aspect of the question in the hope tint we in England may not belong in following the lead of our energetic cousins in making a bold and unsparing attempt !o conquer this element, which has hitherto b»ffbd our ingenuity.