ROCKET SHIPS

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21336, 6 February 1941, Page 3

ROCKET SHIPS

MAY REACH THE MOON A LONG VIEW TAKEN The spectre of rocket planes, which could fly round the world in, perhaps, six hours, promises to worry the i statesmen arranging a peace at the end of the present war, says a New York correspondent. He says the vision is not wholly new, but it has been changing rapidly in the last few weeks. In 1931, the Hungarian rocket scientist, Prof. Hans Oberth in Vienna, forecast rocket war planes which would fly the Atlantic in possibly one hour. He suggested that suen planes would force the world, in sell-protection, to outlaw all war. Now rocket motors are close to practical use, due to two American inventions this fall. One invention is by Prof. Robert H. Goddard, Clark University, whose laboratory is remote Eden Valley, 15 miles outside Roswell, New Mexico. Awesome Things It produces one of the awesome things which strike the eyes of the few persons who have seen one of his rockets taking off. Before it rises, for a second or two, a jet of pure flame strikes down on the valley sand and rolls 50 feet along the surface as a billowing river of fire 10 feet deep. This is the jet of fire which drives the rocket, spreading out as it expands in the air. Tflat flame, at its point of exit from the motor, is about half the surface temperature of the sun. There is notning on earth its heat cannot melt. Its burning, eroding power has been one of the obstacles to building a rocket motor suited to sustained flight. But Professor Godderd, in a recent U.S. patent, finds a new way to protect his motor. This is by letting the fuel, gasoline and liquid oxygen, at around 300 degrees below zero, enter a firing chamber so that it is spread over the metal walls before it ignites. The film of liquid fuel is some protection against destruction by heat. A similar spread of the cold liquid protects the nozzle through which the flaming jet exits. A Rocket Motor The other American invention is a rocket motor for installation on present planes—not as the plane’s main motor, but only for aid in starting or other emergency. E. B. Meyers of New York City made it. This motor fires in intermittent explosions, instead of a continuous jet of fire. That gets around the eroding heat by leaving effective cooling periods between shots. Mr Meyers uses a different fuel, carbon disulphide and nitrous oxygen. This is cooler than Professor Goddard’s fuel, it also, has considerably less power. But even with less power, each explosion may give up to 200,000 pounds pressure for a brief fraction of a second. That means a 200,-000-pound forward kick, enough to aid a present type plane in taking off. « The intermittent explosion proposal is an example of practical adaptations of already well developed rocket principles. Moreover, it is only one of numerous adaptations. Italy has one, which has not been described but only mentioned in recent news reports. Rocket ship reports from Britain are more specific. One of these, appearing in the Science Observer, a New York City publication, told of an experimental English plane driven by compressed air. Air is taken in through the ship’s nose, compressed, heated to give it extra power, and then projected in a jet to turn a turbine propellor. This is an adaptation of the rocket principle. A more direct way of using rocket jets to drive turbines already has been invented by Professor Goddard. He used a 5000 degree jet of fire. Engineers had said this was impossible because the jet, they claimed, would melt the thin metal vanes, or fins, which like the blades of a water-wheel receive the force of the jet. Professor Goddard’s experiments showed that during the part of the revolution while the vanes are not in contact with the jet, they cool, and that the momentary contact is not enough to melt them.