TERRIBLE ENGINE OF WAR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16448, 31 May 1919, Page 11

TERRIBLE ENGINE OF WAR.

A -NEW ROCKET. WORCESTER (Mass.), March 31. Dr. Robert. H. Goddard, professor of physics at Clark College, has invented a new rocket that is reported to be a terrible engine of war, with an altitude range of 70 miles straight up into the air and a distance range of at iciisr zOU miles. The rocket, in the opinion of the scientists who have, investigated its workings is the most efficient rocket known rocket in use to-day has an efficiency of less than three per cent., wiiiie- tut* lioiklard rocket Juis an efficiency of 63 per cent. ( The rocket, has been developed in a special laboratory at Worcester ’tech, and the .signing of l-he armistice prevented its being put to actual use in warfare against the Germans, as all the local tests had been completed. These tests, made bv models, showed that a rocket weighing 30 pounds, equipped with the Goddard system of propulsion, could be sent into the air ‘far above the eartltfs atmosphere. The Goddard rocket is propelled by a perfected gas engine installed in the lower part, of the shell, the explosions that generate the power coming from cartridges that are fed into the chamber by a clock-like time device. The range of the rocket is limited only by the amount of propelling cartridges it ct-nld be fitted to carry. The rocket does not require a cannon to start it on its flight-,.the jondney being started from any point where a man can got. r fhe weapon feature of the rocket is in the head, where a chamber is, fitted to contain high explosives of gas. Men who have followed the development ot Dr. Goddard’s rocjcct claim it can be made as o'fficient in naval warfare as in land battles.