FLYING TO THE MOON

Hokitika Guardian, 25 January 1928, Page 2

FLYING TO THE MOON

NOTED INVENTOR'S PROPHECY. (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association LONDON. Jan. 24. Interest has been aroused by a hook on the exploration of the upper atmosphere bv rockets, by Air Al. Robert Esnaiilt PeltCrie, the famous inventor of the aeroplane joystick, and many other essential aviation devices. He declares that after considering the scientific possibility, ho is emphatic that the 240,000 miles flight to the moon will eventually be made by man.

The vehicle will be a cigar-shaped rocket, propelled by gases or atomic particles driven out of the rocket’s till at an extreme velocity. The flight would occupy forty-nine hours. The rocket would be pointed directly towards the zenith and would leave the earth’s surface at a comparatively slow speed, becoming faster and faster through the higher regions. At the altitude of seventy miles, density falls to practically nothing, and its speed would reach a maximum of six miles per second. After travelling two thousand miles, it would then travel on its momentum, decreasing in speed to a mile and a-quarter per second at the central point where the attractions of the earth and the moon balance. On arriving .within 150 miles of the moon, the rocket would be headed about and the power turned on again. The propulsive gases would simply be used to slow up the descent, and the pilot would probably lay a straight flat course with the moon al one end of the telescope and the earth at iho other.” Ho adds: ”1 have been studying the question from the view of pure mechanics for fifteen years, and T am convinced it will become possible. People may smile, yet within my lifetime I have seen mankind peilonn miracles. AA'bcn it is possible to fly to the moon, it will be almost as easy to go on to A Jars and Venus. In the face of modern progress, who dares to say it is impossible 1 It. is not more fantastic than a three hundred miles an hour aeroplane would have seemed half a century ago.