GERMAN ROCKET MOTOR.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17411, 25 May 1928, Page 8

GERMAN ROCKET MOTOR.

THE INVENTOR’S HOPES. 700 MILES .AN HOUR. ROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY. (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) BERLIN, May 24. When Opel took his seat in his rocket . car his head was just projecting. With a roar like the broadside from a cruiser the car shot off like a flash and disappeared in clouds of thick smoke and black flakes. Then it shot forward at a speed of 112 miles an hour, as each roar portended the explosion of a rocket. It was not an attempt to break the speed record. The inventor’s intention was to demonstrate the successful application of a principle, Lhe whole future of which is in the air, not on the ground. To travel at a height of 20 miles at a speed of 700 miles an hour, and to circumnavigate the earth in one day are among Opel’s concrete proposals. He says it will not be long before the nation will be competing for the development of rocket aviation.

The 2000 spectators were thrilled and alarmed. The president of the German Scientific Research Board said: “We are perhaps standing at a turning point in world communication.”