New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-03-21
Man Thoughts
to Mysteries of
Space
By Arnold D. Prince

stars, in the vestibule of
the footlights?
You hear that question, in various
forms, very frequently these days.
Each time an aviator returns to
earth. dazed from the effects of his
dash for new record heights, he is
besieged with question like that,
or others akin to it.
Viewed from an altitude Of, let
MS say. five or six miles, does the
wav upward seem more difficult
or less? Does the sky seem bluer,
the air clearer and the blazing con-
stellations nearer than down here
on the asphalt at Broadway and
Forty-second Street?
And what of the strange vapors
one hears so much about? Are they
actually as fearsome as we have
been told. and will they remain for
ever an insuperable and insur-
mountable bar to mans ambition to
escape from the atmospheric sea in
which be is engulfed?
Mans AgeOld Curiosity
It is odd how long and even visit
fully man has been asking those
questions and how much in the way
Of suffering and hardship he has
been willing to pay for the answer
he was asking these questions
nearly 1000 years ago when, &C
cording to Aristotle, he even set i'm
pious feet on the summit of sacred
Olympus itself, breathing the while
through wet sponges IN order to
keep himself alive
Afterwaro. when he had learned
a little more about science, he
sought the solution in ktelike de-
wees which tumbled him ignomini-
ously to the ground. Then he starved
and froze and gasped for breath in
balloons, which became the sport of
every vagrant wind and were in
variably beaten back long before
they had solved the riddle. More
recently he has been continuing his
efforts in airplanes, with but little
better success
So now he is going to make
really serious try for the solution in
new style of craft in which he
hopes at last to be at least partly
successful.
He is going to build an airplane
modelled after the submarine and,
setting forth on a voyage such as
even this thriu-hardened world has
meyer known, try to force the illimi-
table barriers in an argosy in which
the aviator will be protected from
The hostile elements which have so
long repened him.
1.-THE Super TERRESTRIAL would
seem to me to be the answer" said
August Post, secretary Of the Aero
Club Of America, giving the pro-
posed carrier the name he himself
had coined.
From what man already has ex-
perienced in his attempts to pierce
The heights he has learned that some
form Of protection not yet devised
~ necessary. Something designed
along the lines of the submarine
would seem to be what is needed.
In Alright Cabin
The incloscd cabin for the avia-
tor suggests itself as the most SEN
slole scheme. Sitting in this air
light compartment, he would be with
IN easy reach Of the levers control
ing the mechanism and regulating
me supply of oxygen needed by him
self as we'll as by the super chargers
~ which air at sea level pressure is
now fed to the carburetors In alti-
] tude flights.
He would not only be safeguard
90 against the physical hardships
winch have beaten him back hereto
iore' but. with adjustable propellers
eapaoie of increasing their purchase
On the rarefied atmospheres, he
'ouio push his way into levels now