BIG ROCKET TO MOON.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5374, 14 January 1929, Page 2

BIG ROCKET TO MOON.

JOURNEY THROUGH SPACE.

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS.

I met Monsilqur R. Esnault-Pelterje, the inventor of the “joy-stick” control of the aeroplane—Who lectured at the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall, London, on travelling by rocket to the planejts —in his flat in Berkeley Street, Mayfair, (writes Commander H. M. Daniel, in the Daily Mail). He was surrounded by diagrams, charts, and papers covered with advanced mathematical calculations. In disc,ussing'the problem of a journey through space he disposed of the idea that it could ever, be undertaken in any sort of a projectile fired from a gun.

“But a rocket,” .he; said, “i's, different. As it ascends its speed increases indefinitely ; firstly because the force of gravity becomes weaker, and se;condly because the mass of the rocket is getting steadily less as the composition burns away.”

Diagram’s; show how fast the rocket must be travelling at various iheigjits, to. be sure of flnallly escaping from the earth. A study of these show at o.hce the enormous size of rocket required to achieve this in order to carry enough composition or fuel, not to m ention air for the occupants to breathe, which, when compressed for transport, is quite a heavy ity.

German scientists, are to-day hard at work on similar investigations, and from figures obtained by them in recent practical experiments he considers that the problem is not so. far from solution as he had recently thought. But he clearly points out three obstacles that are yet to be overcome before a serious attempt can be made.

One was the necessity of finding. s,ome fairly hopeful method of return. Without some special safeguard the “astrocraft” would be consumed with the heat generated by friction with the air., and; therefore a reverse rocket to act as a brake would be necessary.

When the energy of the atom can be harnessed to man’s use the whole subject will at once assume practical proportions: until then we must perhaps be content with small flights, a mere matter of a hundred miles, or so into space to return again by parachute.

When asked how long he thought it would be before there couldi be any experimental flights, he answered, “In five years I prophesy that there will be such flights.”