Two Men in a Ball

A yellow, rubberized cotton gasbag shot upward from Augsburg, Germany before dawn one day last week, dragging after it a 7-ft. aluminum sphere, half black, half silver, from which flew a. Swiss flag. Up, up--and to the south and west--the balloon CH-113 soared until it was a gleaming globule in the rays of the sun not yet risen. Up above the 42,000-ft. mark reached by the late Balloonist Lieut. Hawthorne Gray, up past Lieut. Apollo Soucek's airplane altitude of 43,166 ft.--the highest that man had ever risen--the CH-113 entered the stratosphere eventually to hover ten miles above the earth.

From within the aluminum ball two men peered through port windows at the endless blue vacancy about them. The taller of the two, gawky, long-haired, bespectacled, clad in rough homespun and a towering collar, was Auguste Piccard, 47, Swiss professor of physics in the University of Brussels. The other was his assistant, Charles Kipfer, 20 years his junior. On their heads were baskets stuffed with pillows, to cushion them in case of a sudden drop of their gondola. They had been preparing for this ascension since last summer, had tried and failed last autumn (TIME, Sept. 22) and were now aloft largely because of the backing of King Albert's favorite Fund for Scientific Research. Their purpose: to study the intensity of cosmic rays in the stratosphere.

All day long the silver speck in the sky, now vanishing, now swimming into sight again miles away, had most of Europe agog. It was staying up too long! Evidently it could not come down! There was said to be oxygen supply for only ten hours, and here it was 15 hours already. Piccard and Kipfer must be floating, like Mahomet in his coffin, dead in the middle of the sky!*

About 9 p. m. the CH-113 settled upon the glacier above the village of Ober Gurgl in the Austrian Tyrol. There the scientists rested until morning beside their deflated balloon, calmly working on their notes, securing precious instruments. A searching party met them toward midday, led them to safety and the world's news spotlight.

Professor Piccard blinked bewilderedly behind his spectacles at all the excitement. True, they had remained aloft longer than intended, but that was only because the gas valve had failed to work, and they were forced to wait until the cool of evening contracted the hydrogen in the balloon's bag which was only one-seventh full upon starting. Yes, it was fortunate that their oxygen held out so long. No, they suffered no hardship except heat and thirst. Half the shell of the gondola had been painted black to absorb the rays of the sun in the frigid stratosphere. Result: When far aloft, the air was 75DEG below zero Fahrenheit outside, it was 106DEG above inside. Their drinking water ran out. They resorted to licking the condensed moisture from the walls of their cabin. As to their flight itself, they had ascended much faster than they desired. But "our ascent was of fairy-like beauty. . . . The rare glances from the cabin windows which our work permitted us ... belong to the most beautiful which I have seen in my life. . . ."

Newshawks from all over Europe converged upon Gurgl by rail, motor, cycle and airplane. Before long the mild-mannered Professor Piccard was impelled to say, in reply to a question about his "suffering": ". . . the worst experience is being called out of bed at 2 o'clock in the morning."

Significance. Professor Piccard's prime purpose was to determine whether cosmic rays were, as believed, ten times more powerful in the stratosphere than upon reaching the earth through the atmosphere. Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for physics, said in Chicago: ''Such measurements have been made before with sounding balloons, but the conditions under which Professor Piccard made his observations would be much more satisfactory." He expected the results to prove "very valuable" to science.

Not so kind were the German men of science to the obscure Swiss who had become a world figure overnight. He had not conferred with such eminent students of the stratosphere as Regener, Hergesell, Hansen. His instruments were inadequate; Regener's devices would have permitted accurate measurements. Science already knew as much about the cosmic ray as Piccard could learn at firsthand. All told, his most important contribution was the proof that men can live in an airtight container. Those findings might be useful to the men who are building a stratosphere airplane in the Junkers plant at Dessau.

The Stratosphere is a rarefied layer, presumably 20 mi. deep, encountered about eight miles above the earth's surface. The temperature is curiously stationary: about --75DEG F. About 40 mi. beyond the stratosphere is the mysterious Heaviside Layer of ionized gases, from which radio waves "bounce" like light rays from a mirror.

Data about the stratosphere has long been gathered by instruments borne in rockets and unmanned balloons (small balloons have gone to 100,000 ft.) but the sum total of knowledge is not great. It is known that no clouds or rain occur in the belt. There is a notion that the prevailing wind is easterly, counter to the earth's movement; but Professor Piccard last week snorted: "That's a lot of bosh." Also it was supposed that the stratosphere visitor in daytime would see stars shine in a purple sky. Piccard's sky was deep, dark blue but starless.

NACA Show

"To supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution," Congress in 1915 created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a group of experts now numbering 15, appointed by the President to serve without pay. In theory, the committee is the semi-official laboratory of all U. S. aviation--Governmental and commercial. Since aviation's boom year of 1927, this Committee's annual appropriations have increased from $513,000 to $1,053,790. Best known products of its laboratory at Langley Field, Va. are NACA wing sections and the NACA engine cowling which first won fame on Capt. Frank Monroe Hawks's transcontinental speed flights.

Every year leading airplane builders and designers assemble at Langley Field where Chairman Joseph Sweetman Ames points with pride to NACA's developments of the past twelvemonth. Last week a party of some 200 made the visit. They saw:

P: A new wind tunnel, largest in the world, 60 ft. wide and 30 ft. high, in which a full- size airplane may be tested in an airflow of 115 m. p. h. The tunnel consists of two yawning mouths, between which an airplane is mounted on a high caisson. Wind for the tests is blown by propeller-fans driven by two 4,000-h. p. motors. First test will be made with a 20-ft. model of the Navy's new dirigible Akron, to determine how to build the tail surfaces.

P: A seaplane testing channel one-half mile long, 24 ft. wide, 12 ft. deep. An electric towing carriage which straddles the channel, can haul hulls or pontoons through the water at 60 m. p. h.

P: A "nonstalling" attachment which prevents the pilot of a plane from pulling his control stick back far enough to cause a stall.

P: A "safety fuel" developed by chemists of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, which burns as slowly as furnace oil, yet, it is claimed, has as much power as gasoline.

Diesel Comeback

Comparatively little has been heard of the Packard Diesel airplane motor since its sensational introduction at the All- American Aircraft Show of 1930 (TIME, April 14, 1930). Some manufacturers (including Ford, Stinson, Buhl) offered the engine as optional equipment in their planes, but few were sold last year. Owners and operators, while aware of the engine's worthy characteristics (oil burning, no ignition system, no carburetion, no fire hazard) were content to wait until it had proved itself in others' hands.

Last week at Jacksonville Beach, Fla. the Packard Diesel brought itself sharply back into prominence. It kept a Bellanca plane aloft for 84 hr. 33 min. without refuelling, thus recapturing for the U. S. the world record from the French pilots Bossourtrot & Rossi by 9 hr. 10 min. At the controls of the Bellanca were two Packard testpilots: short, bald Walter Lees, who drove a horsecar in Saint Augustine, Fla. before the War to earn money for flying lessons; and big, black-haired Frederick Brossy, son of a wealthy Detroit businessman.

The 3 1/2-day flight, in which the plane traveled far enough to have reached Japan from Jacksonville, was the third attempt of Lee & Brossy to break the endurance record. In March they were thwarted by a fuel leak. In April they broke the U. S. record, were within 1 hr. 35 min. of the world record when a line squall drove them down.

Cow Flight

Folksong says it is a good thing that cows don't fly in Mobile, in Mobile, but last week a cow flew in Ohio, from Cincinnati to Washington Court House, to publicize that town's Union Stockyard Co. and American Airways Inc. Commission Merchant D. F. ("Bud") Brown arranged the stunt, sent out green handbills proclaiming: COWS CAN FLY!

* One who did not fear was Professor Placard's twin brother Jean, an engineer of Wilmington, Del. The Brothers Piccard are over 6 ft. tall, look exactly alike. As students in Munich they played twin-pranks. Once they alternated posing for an unsuspecting sculptor. Once, just after Auguste had been shaved by a barber, in walked Jean with a three-day stubble to collect a wager that "his whiskers grew faster than any others in the world."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.