ROCKET PROPULSION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 10 (Supplement)

ROCKET PROPULSION

EXPERIMENTS IN GERMANY. NON-EXPLOSIVE LIQUID. Notwithstanding previous disappointments, Max Valier, the German designer, is going ahead with his revolutionary cars. The other day his latest rocket car attain a speed of between 50 and 60 miles an hour.

For a long time the experiments of this engineer-astronomer-meteorolo-gist-gas expert, first heard from during the Great War, were handicapped through lack of capital. Then he and his work were Ckken up by Fritz von Opel, one of the most successful manufacturers of motor-cars in Germany, and a pyrotechnic expert, named Sander.

The rocket car, which was first tried in April last year, was the work of these three men. In the first test it attained a speed of 62 miles an hour for a few seconds. The second time it did 120 miles an hour with Opel himself at the wheel. Further trials were held in June in which two cars were destroyed, but in neither case was anyone on board.

Liquid Chosen. Later secret tests were carried out with a rocket aeroplane which Valier said could travel from Berlin to New York in two hours'. The difficulty was the immsense cost of the explosive contained in the rockets. It was said that every second of motion cost a small fortune.

That was the reason why explosive powder was discarded and experiments begun with a non-explosive liquid, which it was estimated could be produced 500 times more cheaply. From those experiments came a new rocket car. This machine derived its propelling force not from explosive powder but from cold high-pressure jets of liquid gas. Valier attained a speed of about 37 miles an hour. That speed he has increased to about 60 miles an hour. A cable received the other day said that his car, driven by recoil action by means of the explosion of compressed carbonic acid gas, was towed by an ordinary car until a speed of 30 miles an hour was reached. It was then uncoupled and Valier carried on, reaching a speed of between 50 and 60 miles an hour over a considerable distance of the road.

Recently, describing Valier’s experiments, the New York “Herald-Trib-une” said: “Nothing that Valier does these days causes any surprise, for he has already proved that there is considerably more to his expeTiments than mere freakishness. He has made many remarkable claims, but has shown enough of actual performance to interest scientific men the world over.”

Oberth’s Rocket. This question of mode of propulsion is exciting great interest in Germany. Valier has a rival. Professor Hermann Oberth has devised a liquid air mail rocket.

Those who have seen it describe it as a forty-feet long iron double tube affair, having a copper coat and containing about 1601 b of liquid oxygen. Professor Oberth expects it to attain a height of 30 miles, although he regards 45 miles as not beyond the reach of possibility. The rocket will contain a barometer, thermometer, and hydrometer for taking meteorological measurements in hitherto unexplored strata of the upper air. These instruments, which will operate independently, will be attached to a parachute fastened to the head of the rockets and arranged to tear itself loose the moment the rocket starts to ’fall.

If his experiment succeeds, Professor Oberth plans to construct a rocket engine for carrying mail, which he believes can be hurled from Europe to America in exactly half an hour.