Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-10-05
FLYING EXPERIMENTS
POSSIBILITIES OF FLIGHT IN FU-
TURE AND SOME AERoDRoMEs.
English, French and American Models
-Achievements oflscientists and
Adventures.
From the London Mail.


From the London Mail < W
Among the gifts that science conceals in
the lucky bag of the future, the possibility
of flight is certainly the most alluring. We
have all flown in dreams-which may be an
unconscious "Reminiscences of the sports of
our probably arborear ancestors-but the
men who have actually flown in modern
times can be counted on the fingers of one
hand. and most of them. like Lilienthal and
Pitcher. came to sudden end in conse-
quence. Yet the possibility is so attractive
that when we want to pass our highest
commentator on a sport-skating or mo-
toring or sculling in outrigger or free
wheeling down Hindhead-we say it is like
flying How long will 1t be before we are
able to test that comparison by personal
experience?
1t is rash to prophesy. but there are not
few signs which encourage one to hazard
guess that men will be flying long before
the present century draws to an end. In a
sense they are flying already; such a trip
as Mr.. Stanley Spencer has made in emula-
ton of NJ. Santos-Dumont must be classed
among experiments in flying. Yet 1t does
not quite come within the definition of fly
ing on which the scientific student of aero
nautics and the man in the street would
agree. Flying, in the proper sense, involves
the birds capacity to travel through the air
in any desired direction with considerable
independence of wind and weather. Expert
ments to that end have been carried out on
two distinct lines. of which is well
Illustrated by Mr.. Spencers recent trip
across London or the journey which he
proposes to take today, while the other
gave rise to the flight lately made in the
United States by Prof Langleys model
aerodrome. 1t may be interesting to point
out the essential difference between these
two lines of research and to show why 1T
seems to many students of aeronautics that
Mr. nd fol- a. m
who use balloons, for all their courage and
ingenuity are on the wrong track.
Navigable Balloons.
The balloon. which has been brought very
near perfection in the course of the last
century, has no analogue in nature All
known creatures that fy-birds and bats,
and flying fsh-support themselves by
striking the air with their wings or aero
planes: they are heavier than equal vol
ume of air. and keep themselves from fall
ing just as a boys kite does. by the press
ure that their wings exert upon the at
moSphere. A shot bird drops like stone.
The balloon, a purely human contrivance
ascends because it Is lighter than the same
volume of air. and is able to take up with
it a weight of car and man and ballast
equal to the difference. For many centu-
rieS men have Vainly Striven to make them
selves wings, and have always failed be-
cause a mans weight is so much greater
imam Cflat OF Il DlTu III proportion 10 Ills
muscular strength that he cannot support
himself the swallow and the albatross
do easily. Consequently. when the balloon
had been perfected. and 1t was seen that 1t
afforded q kind of raft swimming belt
for the would-be f1ier 1t was natural that
aeronauts should endeaEor to solve the
problem of navigating a balloon In any de-
sired direction, and so approach the art of
fight by quite different avenue from that
of nature. The problem seemed to resem-
bic that of adding oars or sails to the raft
and so producing an airy analogue to the
galley or the sailing ship
Unfortunately the analogy is incomplete.
ship is exposed to two different sets of
forces. The water supports it. while the
wind provides a method of propulsion. The
dismasted hull drifts helplessly with the
tide. but when sails are added 1t pro-
gress in any direction. with against the
wind But the balloon. wholly immersed i'm
the air. is incapable of lacking, and floats
at the exact speed of the air current in
which it is Immersed Sails are useless to
it. because there is no denser medium to
prevent it's making leeway. Thus the prob
lem became solely one of attaching a pro-
peiler which would drive the balloon
against the wind when necessary Early at
tempts to do this by means of oars or by
Harvesting teams of eagles to the balloon
We're equally unsatisfactory. But in 1884
the advance of mechanical science made ii
possible to build a motor light enough to
be taken w in balloon and strong
enough to propel it against q gentle wind
and the French military balloon of NM.
Renard and krebS made several voyages in
which 1t returned to the starting point-the
only practical test of flying machine With
the still lighter motors now available.
equally successful trips have been made by
NJ. Santos-Dumont and others.
Their Necessary Limitations.
But there is an obvious limit to what can
be done in this direction. a practical fly
ing machine, If it is to be more than the
toy of the sportsman or a convenient aid
to scouting in war, must be able to make a
journey in given direction under any con-
ditions of weather. Think what this means.
The average speed of the wind at mod
crate elevation, shown by the anemo-
meters on the Eiffel Tower, is about eighteen
miles an hour. If we assume a speed of
twenty miles hour necessary for
flying machine which is to be as useful
and reliable as the motor car or the steam
ship, such q machine must obviously be
able to travel about forty miles an hour
through still air in order to achieve tits
moderate speed when an average wind is
blowing against it. But how is any bal
Icon made of a textile fabric to travel
forty miles an hour through the air? All
Xperience-such as that derived from tie
behavior of captive balloons in high winds
shows that the thing is impossible unless
the balloon is constructed of some material
at least as rigid as steel. At such a speed
the ordinary cigar-shaped balloon, even il
not utterly destroyed, would be pitted
and defor1ned that its speed would soon
disappear. In other words, the successful
flying machine must be heavier than its
own weight of air and In that case, why
bother with a balloon at all?
This line of argument meets that of Prof.
Langley, Sir Hiram Maxim and the other
eXperimenters who have copied the bird
and tired to build flying machines which
depend for their power of remaining in the
air solely on the support which the atmos-
phere gives to inclined surface gliding
through it. Prof. Langley. who has given
us the classic research on the behavior of
such aeroplanes, they are called, has
also the honor of having built the most
successful of flying models. His aero
drome driven by an eight-horse- power en-
CINE lately flew some COO yards in semi
| circular course in about forty-iive seconds.
Earlier models did even better. and the
| United States government has had a sixty