BALLOON ASCENT

Hokitika Guardian, 2 July 1931, Page 5

BALLOON ASCENT

VALUABLE DATA OBTAINED. LONDON, May 29. We are now in possession of some news of wliat rto lessor F.ccard and Dr ivipter rightly call “a marvellous flight.” They are safe once more on u-ira firina—although their first contacts were insecure and on the edge of glacier crevasses. What has been achieved in this astounding ascent into the unknown, to a height .above breathable air Y The full value of the experiment has still to be worked out; in the meantime we gasp at still another record broken in a time when records are being broken like eggshells. Hroressoi' Piccard is recorded as having said that during the eighteen-hour vigil “We have seen nothing but the ether varying in its colours from the darkest to the lightest blue.” In their metal sphere, suspended from the vast balloon that reached 160 feet higher, uiih food and oxygen to ke-p inern alive for two days, the professor arid his assistant drilled in a rarefied atmosphere many degrees below zero. Most interest is being taken in the way they made tlieir observations through the glass portholes of their gondola; also how the glass resisted the tremendous pressure of air from within, and how it withstood the effect of the cosmic rays, and all that' has ueen learnt of the cosmic rays.

Professor Piccard has already made known that some of their scientific apparatus has failed to function at the highest altitude, but he had happily been able to establish, among other things that the conductihilitv of gases induced by cosmic rays increased with altitude.

QUEER PHENOMENON. The correspondent of an Innsbruck paper says:—“Discussing some scientific observation in connection with his expermental flight, Professor Piccard declared that he reached 53,000 feet by 7.45 in the morning. They had shot up at the rate of nearly 50 feet pe» second. At the highest altitude the temperature outside the aluminium ball was 66.76 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, or over 100 degress of frost. As their water supply proved insufficient the travellers had scratched their frozen breath from the inside walls of the aluminium ball, collected ar.d melted it, and had drunk it again and again.”

“Breathng in the ball hud occasioned them no difficulties whatsoever, thanks to the good oxygen apparatus they had with them. On the other hand, they had suffered greatly from cold. Pressure on the aluminium hall at the greatest heights was only equal to one-tenth of a noVmnl atmosphere, The' scientists regretted tlieir inability to determine their positions owing to the smallness of their window, which had restricted their vision. , , , ,