From Earth to Moon in Forty-nine Hours.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 18 September 1914, Page 2

From Earth to Moon in Forty-nine Hours.

With about GOlb. of radium, a projectile weighing a ton could be shot from the earth to the moon by the aid of radium in about 19 hours. Thus M. Ernest Archdeacon, who expresses the conviction that in a few centuries aerial navigation as now known will become as out of date as horse traction as a means of transport. The difficulty is to find how to ; release in 49 hours all the energy j contained in the radium, which in the present state of science it would take 2JBOO years to set free. The new means of inter-planetary transport will be Jules Verne's can-non-ball transformed into a continuously self-propelling rocket. But the problem is to give this rocket a self-contained velocity of j 11 kilometres (nearly seven miles) • a second, which would be sufficient < for it to leave the circle of terres- j trial attraction. At this velocity . our planet could be girdled in 66 ! minutes, and the journey from Paris ! to Nice covered in under two mm- j utes.