The Fun of It/Chapter 16
AIR TRAILS OF THE FUTURE
THERE is a mighty difference between the bedecked balloons of the eighteen hundreds and aircraft of today. The vehicles have altered so much in design and usage aeronauts of a century ago, were they to revisit the earth, would recognize few familiar features in modern aeronautical activity. What will be the steps in the next hundred years? Will the distance covered be as great as that in the last?
Of course, it is more than futile to make prophecies—aviation ones especially. They usually turn out more or less like the famous pronouncement of the sour and distinguished scientists long ago. They declared, you remember (and proved mathematically) , that a heavier than air machine, capable of lifting itself off the earth could never, never be built.
I can remember being told as late as 1924 that air cooled radial motors of more than 60 h.p. would never be successful. Now practically all motors on commercial aircraft are this type and some of them develop more than 600 h.p. I can also remember hearing it said that commercial flying at night would prove an impossibility. The United States now maintains 17,500 miles of lighted airways over which 63,000 miles are scheduled daily between sundown and sunup.
But prophesying has two sides.
To show how rapidly some predictions are fulfilled, I recall a conversation I heard the other day. A woman reporter and a man who had been a pilot in the World War were discussing modern air transport. The ex-flyer had just alighted from a big airliner and was describing how tea had been served.
“A table cloth, and cups and spoons,” I heard him say. “If anyone had told me in 1918 that people would ever sit calmly in airplanes and drink tea, I would have laughed my head off.”
His companion was amused.
“How do you suppose air travel will improve in the next ten years?”, she asked.
“Oh, mostly through refinements of what we have now, I think”, he answered. “It will probably be as commonplace to use planes then as to ride on trains now. No one will get any kick out of flying—except old timers who remember.”
“Your prophecies are not exciting enough”, the reporter said. “Can’t you do better?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, just this. Maybe the airplane of the future will look very much like the ones we have today. Maybe just by gradually improved design and improved motors and improved what not, it will reach its ultimate perfection. A good many of aviation’s leaders think so, I know. But isn’t there always the chance that some obscure investigator will stumble on an entirely new principle, and by applying it, make obsolete in a day what we think pretty O.K. now? Such an event would be exciting and that’s what I want to hear about.”
Most people, I thought, are like the reporter. They want startlers. And what’s more, they are likeliest to believe the ones which appear most impossible.
I told a group of not very progressive women once that within two years everyone present would have been in an airplane, i.e., anyone who traveled at all. A good many heads shook negatively to that. But when I described the possibility of future high altitude flying in planes sealed to protect passengers in the rarefied air, going at speeds of 500 to 1000 m.p.h., they took such a development almost for granted.
Yet I maintain my prophecy that aviation, as we know it today, will be accepted as an everyday means of locomotion before we progress to stratosphere flying.
After all, when one considers it, the simple idea of flying from one place to another, is a real startler. What would the early balloonists have thought of doing this? They went up for sport, for acclaim or for reward, and then came down—where it didn’t matter. To go by air to a predetermined destination was never attempted.
But the world today has the transportation idea firmly fixed. It even invades sport flying, which as often as not, means going by airplane several hundred miles (instead of thirty by automobile) for a game of golf.
So prophecies, I think, should follow this lead, because it seems probable that actual development will. If so, increasing speed will be of paramount importance. Aviation has nothing much to sell unless it be this. Today the world’s record is more than 400 miles an hour, attained in a specially built racer. But already there are some commercial airlines in the United States which use airplanes capable of more than 200 miles an hour. Certainly it will not be long before this speed is a general thing—and higher and higher ones will be reached in sporting events.
A physician has recently completed tests which show that apparently the human body can travel up to 700 miles an hour and beyond with no ill effects. Such word is encouraging if I am right in believing the inhabitants of this planet want and will attain increasingly greater speeds as time goes on.
Already several gentlemen are trying to think out ways and means of accommodating. I can tell you of one who has reached the point of considering airplanes projectiles. Beyond certain speeds the wings of a plane tend to retard forward motion. He proposes to design retractable wings which can be operated by the pilot. If it is desired to go very fast, the wings would be pulled in. In landing, or taking off, or just cruising along, they would be spread for needed lift. Of course, this is in addition to pulling in the landing gear, as done on some types now.
Other inventors are working on rocket planes in various parts of the world. Some of these are being developed solely to find a substitute for conventional power plants. Others have behind them enthusiasts who seek to travel to far places, with the moon as a favorite location.
Of course such projects have more than the problem of attaining speed to solve. Such craft, like the stratosphere plane which I have mentioned before, have to be very strong and sealed to protect human life. A supply of oxygen for the journey must be taken along far beyond the “seven mile limit” where the air is not dense enough for earth beings to breathe. Only once,—so far—has the stratosphere been penetrated. That was in the flight of August Piccard and Paul Kitsen, who last year reached a height of 51,775 ft. in a special metal sphere attached to a balloon.
Of as much interest as speed, seem to be airplanes of gigantic size. No sooner had the DO-X been built to carry 162 passengers than plans for a flying boat double its size were announced by another concern. What the physical limits of these Gargantuan monsters are I do not know. If there aren’t any, perhaps their measure of usefulness will decide their proportions. So far, large units have not proved profitable in air line operation, and the shadow of economics always hovers above any development.
Every week one can read of proposed tailless planes, wingless planes, motorless planes, and even
An Artist’s Warning to Early Aeronauts
pilotless planes, where a mechanical robot takes the place of the human equation. Pictures appear of planes that can land equally well on ice or snow or water or land. For the man who suggested what flyers really needed was a plane that could land on a tree or a house, there are proposed safety devices for nice “comings down” including plane ’chutes.
Steam engines, gasoline engines, fuel oil engines—prophecies concerning each may be had for the asking. Less exciting perhaps than some others are those of improvements in instruments and radio beams to guide the pilot through any weather to his home port, be that a concrete island anchored in the middle of the ocean or a plot near the city—crying to be perfected and put into universal use.
What about trans-atlantic flying? Of course that will come—and, according to good reports, sooner than most people believe. So will going around the world the other way, from pole to pole. In fact, it looks as if airplanes will pretty well cover the earth, in the words of one of our best known advertisements.
And perhaps contrary to what has always been the case, i.e. that increased speed has resulted in increased cost, aviation may prove one of the cheapest forms of transportation. From ox-cart to automobile, expense has mounted with m.p.h.’s. Would it not be pleasant, indeed, to have the process reversed?
If this prophecy is fulfilled, railroads take warning! Put wings on your box-cars or buy a controlling interest in the right air-line.
I have one more word for this prophecy chapter. That is the simple reminder that the startling developments people like are only possible through wide-spread labor in many fields. The ex-war pilot was right. Even a new discovery is just fitting in, in the jig-saw puzzle of scientific achievement, an unusually large piece. Many little curley-kews are needed around it to make its meaning clear. All kinds of minds in all kinds of schools and laboratories, or alone in cubby-holes, are trying to work out theoretical details of efficient flight. Helping them are those who put the theories to practical use. That women will share in these endeavors, even more than they have in the past, is my wish—and prophecy.