The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 81

April 10, 1938 THIS Wl-I'K Mogotln Section 7 I- --A shock absorbers behind them lock into the floor. A scene from a Broadway show appears on a television screen, and its music fills the cabin to take the attention of passengers. Inner and outer doors sealed, the purser turns on the air supply. "Please close your window shutters to avoid dizziness," he requests. You pretend to comply, but leave a space.

A red light glows, a field siren wails and the launching machine starts. Instantly the speed rises, like a car wide open in second. You are pressed swiftly but smoothly against the cushion. The car motors howl, and the wind shrieks as the power goes on full. Under the shutter you catch a whirl of lights, then a downward force pulls you deep in your chair.

The car is racing up the incline. A blasting roar, and the rockets are cut in. There is a surge of terrific power and the rocket ship hurtles free, catapulted at 300 miles an hour! The ship tilts steeply upward like a roller coaster in reverse. Half-muffled, the rocket roar comes through the double walls. The ship's angle changes, and another outer port slides opposite your window as the compartment revolves.

You glimpse a weird sight. The earth is plunging into space! Long Island Manhattan Greater New York only a blur of light diminishing at frightful speed. Mist, white in the jet glare, flashes and is gone. The ship has pierced a mile-high cloud in three seconds. And still it accelerates, faster, faster! The roar lessens, along with the rocket glare.

At twenty miles up there is almost no air to sustain combustion, except from the oxygen tanks. Jet flames are cut short at the nozzles, but their reactive force remains the same. For a few minutes the only sound is the muted roar of the rockets, coming through the air space between the walls. A green light flashes, and the purser unlocks the seat gear. "We are now on course, approaching a fifty-mile altitude; speed constant at 3600." Raising the shutter, you look at solid blackness.

Stars lie beyond, but ice blanks the outer port ice that was cloud mist moments ago. Abruptly the muffled rocket roar ceases entirely; but the purser is ready: "Don't be alarmed. We're coasting." Coasting in space, at a mile a second! "We're at the top of our trajectory," the purser adds. "From now on we'll descend." Trajectory This is a giant shell, fired at a continent. But what if the aim were wrong? "No danger," the purser assures you.

"We're on a radio beam. Also, range stations take bearings on our signal wave and flash our position every two minutes. Pilots change course by tilting jets." As you finish a second cigarette, the red light goes on. Seats are locked again. Gradually the rocket grumble builds up and the glare of burning gases returns.

The ship is down in the stratosphere. A brief grinding is heard while folded wings are extended. The rocket blast ends, and the ship glides like an airways plane. A faint jolt, the familiar sensation of wheels rolling along runways, and the ship stops. Scene: A New York executive's office.

Time: JO o'clock, a morning in Chief: Miss Jones, ring for Flynn. Secretary: Mr. Flynn went to London an hour ago. He won't be back until after lunch. Chief: ConfouncT it, I'll have to run over to Singapore myself.

Get me a round-trip on the noon ship and phone my wife I'll be an hour late to dinner. Obviously victims of the city's strenuous life, you say? But wait, let us drop the curtain and raise it on a recent test at a rocket proving ground. Tilted upward in the launching rack is a twelve-foot projectile on wings. Crouching in a safety trench, an expert presses a key. White flame roars back from the.

exhaust nozzle, and the test plane streaks skyward. But almost instantly its wings crumple from the terrific speed, and it falls. Instruments reveal an amazing acceleration to 350 miles an hour in three seconds! Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, in praising the 30-year research of Dr. R.

II. Goddard, not long ago said: "We must look to the rocket for speeds above a few hundred miles ah hour, and consider that rockets may carry explosives faster than airplanes and farther than projectiles." The modern rocket motor is a combustion chamber in which liquid oxygen and fuel (usually gasoline or alcohol) are fired under pressure. A jet of exploding gases is forced through the nozzle at tremendous speed, and the reaction or "kickback" hurls the rocket upward. Goddard's latest rockets exceed 700 miles an hour, and will probably soon surpass 1.000. Rockets are not practical for ground vehicles.

For planes they are practical only in comparatively empty space, with no air to resist acceleration. Ordinary stratosphere planes require some air for operations, and will find their ceiling under twenty miles; but rockets, which operate efficiently in a vacuum, are ideal at that altitude and above. Light planes have already been operated with rockets. In Austria, special rockets carry mail across a mountain. Germany is credited with a rocket shell ranging 640 miles, and with sending a man up six miles in another type.

Germany denies the stories; but an English investigator insists that they are true, and that a pilot rocket was actually built. Regardless, it is known that six nations have proving grounds, with reputable scientists at work. Some of the figures of these scientists are fascinating. Dr. Herman berth of Rumania has measured jet velocities of 9,500 miles an hour.

Even with half that power wasted, transatlantic crossings would require only forty-five minutes. Max Valier, killed in a rocket test, predicted a Berlin-New York flight in ninety minutes. Goddard expects peak efficiency around 3,000 miles an hour. Such speeds would gear civilization to a high pitch might even ruin it by giving destructive power to unscrupulous countries. But experts are more concerned with technical problems, such as insuring a swift yet safe acceleration which the navy gets by catapulting its planes.

Rockets controlled by gyroscopes, by radio and by photoelectric cells are now being developed, to be shot to high altitudes and lowered by parachutes or unfolding wings. Instruments and animals will be carried first; then mail, and at last human passengers unless daredevils upset this order. Lack of funds delays the vast research needed before the building of a high-altitude ship, but on the basis of tests and designs it is possible to preview a flight, The New York terminal is on Long Island. A company limousine brings you at twilight to the take-off station, from which a catapult railway extends for two miles, gradually inclining upward on a massive trestle. The launching car is a streamlined locomotive.

In its cradle lies the Paris ship, rocket tubes extending rearward. Wings folded back, landing gear retracted, it looks like a giant shell. Ticket and passport approved, you enter a round compartment with soft lights in a dome-shaped ceiling, and luxurious swivel chairs arranged in a circle.The compartment is suspended, so that it remains level regardless of the angle of the ship. Your seat is high-backed, with deep cushions. The thick glass port beside you is temporarily aligned with an outer one.

A red light glows on the signal board. The purser has all seats turned forward, so that Glob Photo It sounds fantastic but science is working to make it come true Ti 1 ll 'A The purser unseals the doors, and a dapper official appears. "Bon jour! This way with passports." Behind him are buildings with French signs. It is not a dream. Yet two hours ago you were riding down Broadway.

"An ordeal," some may say. "No sane person would ever get into one of the things." Familiar words. They were said of the first trains, cars, airplanes. But people will ride when rocket ships are built, Earthbound flight, except for great speed, brings nothing beyond comprehension. But space flight there we have little to guide us.

First, a rocket may be aimed at the moon, with a flash bomb to signal arrival. After that, human flight. The first pioneer will be like the primitive man who first put to sea, fighting the fear of things beyond the horizon. There may be death in the unfiltered rays of the sun, out in that final void. Beyond earth's gravity, his ship may become a satellite for another planet.

He may reach his goal and be killed in landing, or die in an airless world. The first who dares will probably never be heard of again. Many others may follow and fail before the secrets of space are learned. But success will come. There has never been a frontier which man has not dared to cross.

Glob Photo by Donald E. Keyhoe Author of "Flying with Lindborgh'.