"Nothing Foolish"

When newsmen at Zurich, Switzerland last week wondered why Professor Auguste Piccard continued to postpone his balloon ascension into the stratosphere, even when weather appeared favorable, the long-haired, long-necked Belgian professor told them: "I promised Mme Piccard that I would not do anything foolish." In fact Mme Piccard, whose fifth child was born a few months ago, once made her husband promise not to make the flight at all. That was last year, just after he and his assistant, Charles Kipfer, had ballooned 51,700 ft. into the heavens-- higher than man had ever before climbed --and had been unable to get down for 15 hr. because of a faulty gas valve. But while the physicist Piccard was readying his new balloon for an ascent by a substitute, Mme Piccard relented.

Professor Piccard had, as he promised, taken greater precautions for his second flight. He was not seeking a new altitude record. A height of ten miles, as before, would satisfy his purpose of studying fur ther the origin of cosmic rays. His last observations agreed with famed Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan that the rays emanate from between the stars.* The new aluminum gondola which he had built to carry himself and his new assistant, Max Cosyns, 25, was superior to last year's which, covered with tourists' scratchings, rests in the library of the Free University, Brussels.

The new gondola is, like the old one, a ball 7 ft. in diameter which can be hermetically sealed from within. Instead of only two observation portholes it has eight, like an eyeball with eight pupils. The portholes afford not only a better view of the surroundings but a clear view of the gasbag above, so that the descent valves may be kept untangled. Another innovation: the entry port may be reclosed from the inside, even if opened during flight. Instead of being painted half white, half black, like the old gondola, the new one is all white enamel. Last year the black half had been painted to attract heat, for fear the aeronauts would suffer from cold in the upper atmosphere. Instead they suffered intense heat and thirst.

Also this year the equipment includes short-wave wireless, parachutes.

Mme Piccard insisted upon one final precaution. When Professor Piccard and Assistant Cosyns start skyward from Dubendorf Airdrome, airplanes and racing automobiles will set out. to be near the spot where the balloon comes to rest. In one of the automobiles will be Mme Piccard.

*Last week unmanned balloons sent up 17 1/2 mi. (a record) by Germany's Professor Erich Regener brought down evidence limiting Piccard's observation that the intensity of cosmic rays increases steadily with altitude. Above 39,000 ft. the intensity tends to become constant.

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