Red River prospector. (Red River, Taos County, N.M.) 1900-190?, 1907-01-24
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BY JOHN RITCHIE. JR..
Boston Scientific Society.

@HIs is an interesting and important question, about which
much is written in a very optimistic way. Man has been ex
perimentng along two different lines of investigation with a
view to the solution Of the problem of flying through the air
M with balloons and with aeroplanes.
Although the balloon has been fairly familiar to us for
VNf9A more than 100 years and has done many things that it was.
EEN4M not expected to do, still as a means of navigating the air it is
&&1 practically IS manageable as when in 1856 our own Dr.
Jefies, of Boston, crossed the channel from England to
France in a balloon filed with gas. 1t is perfectly true that the dreams of
to-day become the realities of tomorrow, but for aerial navigation the
dream has been a long one and the morrow has surely not yet dawned. A
uidng discovery may at any time bridge the gap between theory and prc-
de, but the actual advance is not yet much to boast about.
Itis not to be understood that the balloon is not of any use at all. for
on the contrary, as was suggested at the beginning Of this article, it has
helped in many ways that were not expected of it. By its means very much
has been learned of the conditions existing in the upper air, conditions
The balloon has been Of a good deal of ephemeral value, when, as at Paris,
it has been the means of conveying messages, and even an ardent astron-
omer, over the heads of the besiegers to places of neutrality and safety
Then, again, they have been of use in a military way, not in the dread work
of carrying aloft quantities Of high explosives and dropping them into the
camps of the enemy, but as vantage posts from which to inspect his en-
Tenchments + his movements. And then again they have furnished a new
sport for the rich, one which has the advantages Of being expensive, e1-
elusive and thrilling. But toward the practical navigation of the air the
balloon has contributed very little appreciate aid since Montgolfer and
Jefries made their memorable ascents a century and more ago.
Nor have the aeroplanes contributed to the science a much as one
might wish. Although ever since the days of Leonardo da Vinci, geoogst
poet, artist and engineer, experiments have been made and hosts of them,
still the question of Darius Green, "The birds can fly and why can't I~
has not been satisfactorily answered. AS a question in physics there seems
not to be the slightest doubt about it, that with sufficient power an aero
plane can maintain itself and its load in the air. The mathematical por-
ton of the problem Las been SC far developed that according to the testi-
mony Of one Of my friends, himself among the foremost of the physicists,
the principal matters for study are the starting and ahghtng. But still the
aeropane has not made much for practical man flight. There has been the
hope that the great invention of light weight, high-powered engines that
the automobile has demanded might solve the difficulty, and it can hardly
be that this will not be an efficient factor, but the practical results, the ac-
compished flights are far from satisfactory. 1t is true that the Wright
brothers have made flights of some miles, and have, it is said, interested
the French government in their work, but they are, themselves, but at the
very beginning of the problem.
If it were a question of navigating with or against some mild-man-
nnrnd+ ro1n wind whose direction and force were reasonably constant daY
after day, the present condition might be considered perhaps a sensible
advance. But in the weather of the northeastern United States the matter
lis a very different one. Under our variable conditions Of direction and
velocity of wind the minimum of speed developments must needs be very
high. In my own judgment, this should be not less than 100 miles an hour.
A less strongly powered oeroplane, caught by one Of our ordinary gales,
would be blown to sea perhaps, or at least driven before the wind, with no
possibility of return till the wind had subsidized. This is not a pleasant pre-
dbament to consider and is a highly dangerous one. Unless such a posi-
Ibiity be guarded against it would be unsafe to start even in a calm. Thus
the minimum for bare safety in air flight must actually equal or exceed our
present maximum for locomotive engines under the best of conditions.
With this fact in view, it becomes evident that safe and successful
man flight is a problem which we seem hardly to have begun
a matter MATTER ' for 'T the distant iisaat 'f future to &~ MA+4@
I.No~DEh