Better than the Germans'?

At the end of World War II, the Germans had an enormous lead over non-German rocket men. To show some of the progress made since by the U.S., General Electric Co. last week gave a guarded glimpse of its rocket motor laboratory at Malta, near Schenectady. The massive test-stands are hidden in a 3,000-acre pine forest well marked with "restricted" signs. Closely shepherded newsmen and photographers did not learn much, except that G.E. has been busy on rockets since 1945, when it first undertook to assemble captured V-25.

Dr. Richard W. Porter, head of "Project Hermes," as G.E. calls its rocket program with Army Ordnance, feels that the German lead has been overcome. The G.E. rocket motors, some of which were static-tested spectacularly for the visitors, are about 10% more efficient than the motors of the V-25. They are smaller for the equivalent power, and they burn commercially pure alcohol instead of the alcohol mixed with 25% water that the Germans used to hold down the heat of combustion. The improvements, Dr. Porter believes, will show up in payload--the ultimate payoff of rocketry. G.E. does not say how many of its motors, if any, have yet been flown at White Sands Proving Ground, N. Mex.

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