A MAMMOTH AIR SHIP. A New Scheme for Aerial Navigation.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 191, 12 February 1887, Page 7

A MAMMOTH AIR SHIP. A New Scheme for Aerial Navigation.

Dr. A. de BoussET.of Chicogo.is convinced of the practicability of a scheme to navigate the air. He ib perfecting his invention and a company has already been formed to push the enterprise. He claims that by Mb plan the difficulties which have attended the handling of gas balloons will be entirely removed. With ascensional force greatly increased by his as yet untried invention, he believes that his air ship will be capable of sustaining not only its complement of machinery, but in addition a large number of passengers and considerable freight. The inventor departs from the old method of obtaining ascensional force by means of hydrogen, and proposes to get the desired result by what he terms the vacuum theory, not heretofore triei. In regard to this point, he argues that balloons filled with hydrogen rise in the air because hydrogen is about fifteen tidies lighter than the atmosphere, the gas being but onefifteenth of the same volume of air. The ascensional force is sufficient to lift a silk balloon with its car, ballast and passengers, for the force of such a balloon ten yards in diameter would be the difference between 91 poundB,the weight of the gas,"and 1,376 pounds, the weignt of the air displaced by it. The inventor proposes to increase the ascensional force by doing away with the hydrogen and its weight. Briefly, the vacuum air ship consists of a steel cylinder 138 feet in diameter as cending in cones, having a total length of 654 feet. Its body will be made of steel plates one-forty fourth of an inch thick, which, with interior supports and braces, will weigh 260,680 pounds. The plates have been tested and proved capable of sustaining pressure double that of the atmosphere. The volume of air contained in the proposed cylinder would weigh 719,707 pounds, giving an ascensional force, if the vacuum were complete, of 459,026 poundß. If only half the air be exhausted there will still be a very great ascensional force obtained. The air ship is to be propelled by air screws, capable of exhausting 30,000 cubic feet per minute, which it is calculated will propel the ship at tbe rate of seventy miles per hour. Power for driving the screws will be obtained from an eleotri c motor, which receives currents from auto-accumu-lators sufficient in number to give 100-hoxse power. As the force calculated to propel the ship is but twenty-five,the remaining seventy-five will be held in reserve. It is estimated that the exhausting air screws above mentioned will give at least 240,000 cubic feet of air blowing against the atmosphere, which creates the propulsion desired. It is proposed to travel at an altitude of four or five miles above all atmospheric disturbances.