Rocket Trip to Venus Starts Soon !

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 7

Rocket Trip to Venus Starts Soon !

Professor Proposes to \ Do Trip in 48 Hours EXPECTS NOT TO RETURN Professor Robert Condit is making final preparations for a 22,000,000-mile flight to the planet Venus in a gigantic rocket, and expects to start from Miami beach soon. He estimates he will arrive there within 48 hours. The only food he will carry will be one sandwich and one bottle of water. This is the remarkable story told in an American exchange. Condit is preserving the secret of his rocket machine, but admits that he expects to travel skyward by systematically firing propelling charges from the multiple rocket chambers of his •invention. Starting comparatively slowly (about airplane speed), he estimates his rocket will travel almost at the speed of light once he has passed beyond the earth’s gravitational pull. Return Journey? Approaching Venus he plans to swing the rocket about in order to counteract the planet’s force of gravity sufficiently to permit an easy landing. Condit, whose venture is greatly interesting American scientists and astronomers, admits that he will have to determine by what means he will return to the earth when he gets to Venus. He does not expect his rocket will retain sufficient explosive charges to bring him back. His aim is to get there to ascertain whether vegetable and animal life exist, and whether there is air suitable for human beings. Hazards of Trip He fully realises he may never re- : turn, runs a risk of the rocket crash- ! ing at the start, and is courting the i danger of hurtling round and round j like a comet if his machine fails when j it is in the void beyond the earth’s air ; band. Venus is almost exactly the same size as the earth, and is the nearest of the planets when it is interposed between the sun and the earth. Little is known of the planet, as when it is closest to the earth observation is practically impossible owing to the sun being directly behind it.