United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is interesting to note, however, that the supporters of the airship have worked out a general theory that the lighter-than-air vessel with its already demonstrated cruising and weight-carrying capacity will be used for all long routes, and for that almost exclusively, while the heavier-than-air vessel, with its great speed and facility for maneuvering, will be used for local flights.
Lighter-than-air craft, mainly for reasons of cost and vulnerability, did not receive such an impetus from the war as did the aeroplane, but the modern airship has claims for use over distances exceeding 1,000 miles. It can fly by night with even greater ease than by day; fog is no deterrent; engine trouble does not bring it down; and it can take advantage of prevailing winds.
In the matter of airships, Germany was markedly favored by the possession of the Zeppelin type, whose speed and endurance is still unequaled by the smaller, nonrigid dirigibles which constitute the chief bulk of the British, French, Italian, and Russian fleets of "lighter-than-air" machines.
Not until the eighteenth century did the experimenters with lighter-than-air devices show any practical results. Not until the twentieth century did the advocates of the heavier-than-air machines show the value of their fundamental idea. The former had to discover a gaseous substance actually lighter, and much lighter, than the surrounding atmosphere before they could make headway.
His book, My Airships, is a record of his eight years of work on lighter-than-air machines, a period in which he constructed no less than fourteen dirigible balloons, beginning with a cubic capacity of 6,350 feet, and an engine of 3 horse-power, and rising to a cubic capacity of 71,000 feet on the tenth dirigible he constructed, and an engine of 60 horse-power, which was fitted to the seventh machine in order of construction, the one which he built after winning the Deutsch Prize.
The most successful of the German lighter-than-air machines are those known respectively as the semi rigid and non-rigid types, the best examples of which are the Gross and Parseval craft. Virtually they are Teutonic editions of the successful French craft of identical design by which they were anticipated. The Lebaudy is possibly the most famous of the French efforts in this direction.
It is the same with the aeroplane when arrayed against a Zeppelin. It is the mosquito craft of the air. How then can a heavier-than-air machine triumph over the unwieldy lighter-than-air antagonist? Two solutions are available. If it can get above the dirigible the adroplane may bring about the dirigible's destruction by the successful launch of a bomb.
This end appears to be achieved with the Astra type of dirigible, the story of the development of which offers an interesting chapter in the annals of aeronautics. In all lighter-than-air machines the resistance to the air offered by the suspension ropes is considerable, and the reduction of this resistance has proved one of the most perplexing problems in the evolution of the dirigible.
Before turning to the pioneer efforts in England and the pre-war organization of our air forces, some account of the development of the lighter-than-air dirigible is desirable. The earliest conception of an airship is to be found in General Meusnier's design in 1784 for an egg-shaped balloon driven by three screw propellers, worked, of course, by hand.
Considering its very small bulk, this worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold is heavy. Inevitably we saw that there must be some connection between this unprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air gem of mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two apart.
Word Of The Day