Blots & Prospects

According to optimists, the future of air transport is embryonically visible in the laboratories, wind tunnels, charts, tables, mathematical equations, blueprints and brains of aeronautical scientists. From the eggs of experiment, theory and calculation, the optimists hope, will hatch like shimmering larvae the bigger, safer, faster airplanes of tomorrow. According to pessimists, there is not likely to be much future if the dark blots on the present scene are not removed. Both dark blots and bright prospects were discussed in Manhattan last week when the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences met at Columbia University.

Human Element, Captain Harry George Armstrong, M. D., is in charge of the Army Air Corps' physiological laboratory at Dayton, Ohio. After four years of research on military and commercial pilots, Captain Armstrong reported last week that too much has been expected of the human element in aviation. "A pilot begins his career," he said, "in good physical condition, with an exceptionally stable mental and emotional system. Yet, in one study, 11% of all pilots and 50% of all those who had reached the age of 30 were suffering some form of functional neurosis or nervous breakdown. And physical breakdown resulted in retirement ten years earlier than expected.

"In a large aircraft there is more to do in the cockpit than can reasonably be expected of anybody. . . . There is a multiplicity of wheels, buttons, knobs, gadgets, instruments to be checked, landing gear. ""wing flaps, radio communication, navigation problems, fuel consumption, ground speed. . . .

"The number of accidents charged to 'pilot error' is by no means an index to the number of errors committed. . . It is only in the mountainous regions where the clouds have solid cores [i.e., peaks against which an airplane can smash] that the errors are brought to public attention."

At high altitudes oxygen deficiency is dangerous not only for physiological but for psychological reasons. Chronic effects of oxygen-want appear only in pilots, are never seen in casual passengers. "The point at which oxygen-want should be relieved in the pilot," declared Captain Armstrong, "is the subject of heated controversy. The average pilot thinks it is smart to go to a high altitude without oxygen. Oxygen-want is like alcohol. The worse off one is, the better he feels. It is regrettable that oxygen-want is not an extremely painful process.

"Under better physiological conditions, with a simplified cockpit and an enlarged crew, there would be greater safety, fewer pilot errors, fewer crashes, less loss of life and equipment and great revenue from a more confident public. There would be a less rapid turnover of pilots and a longer useful service, and they would live a longer and more healthful life."

Assisted Takeoffs. Dr. Jerome Clarke Hunsaker is head of the mechanical engineering department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked on & off for the Navy, for Goodyeay-Zeppelin Corp., for Bell Telephone Laboratories, designed the Shenandoah, first helium-filled dirigible, the Navy's once famed NC flying boats, was a co-designer of the Akron and Macon. Last week Dr. Hunsaker observed that, for non-stop trans-ocean flights, a 20-ton landplane could carry twice the payload of a 20-ton flying boat. But it is hard to get heavily loaded landplanes off the ground. Dr. Hunsaker thought that "assisted takeoffs" would solve that difficulty. In the centre of the field would be a subterranean chamber containing a power winch. A cable running from winch to plane near the edge of the field would tow the plane, assisting the motors and shortening the take-off run. When the plane passed over the underground winch house the cable would be automatically detached.

Heat 8 Polish, A meteor hurtling into earth's atmosphere gets glowing hot because of friction. Even the airplanes of the future are not expected to travel as fast as meteors (several miles a second), but in a substratosphere plane traveling 400 m.p.h. or more the problem of friction-generated heat must be considered. At comparatively low altitudes (10,000 ft. down), the piling up of air cushions or "shock waves" constitutes most of the resistance to high speed. But in the thin air of the substratosphere, the resistance would be mostly "skin friction"--that is, the push of air molecules against tiny irregularities on the body and wings of the plane. Theodore von Karman and Hsue-shen Tsien declared that to avoid heating and to keep down skin friction, the surface of the plane would have to be polished to mirror smoothness.

Moreover, the airflow against exposed motors would not cool them but would heat them up. Engines would have to be protected inside a special cowling arrangement which would slow down the air before admitting it to the engine surfaces for cooling.

1,000-Mile Rocket. At his lonely experiment station in New Mexico, Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard, foremost U. S. rocket experimenter, has designed rockets which shoot up vertically more than a mile, attain maximum speeds of 700 m.p.h. In Manhattan last week, Frank Joseph Malina and Apollo Milton Olen Smith of California Institute of Technology showed that the thrust of an ascending rocket constantly increases, because the ratio of combustion chamber pressure to that of the thinning outside air increases with higher altitude, and because the force of gravity decreases. Even assuming a constant thrust, they declared, it is possible in theory to build a three-step rocket (three mechanisms firing one after another) which would go up 5,100,000 ft. (nearly 1,000 miles), reach a top speed of 11,000 m.p.h. That speed at that height would be enough to clear the rocket of earth's gravitational pull, keep it moving onward in space.

In Washington, Patent No. 2,104,144 was granted to one Stephen J. Zand of Forest Hills, N. Y. for an idea on keeping the doors of substratosphere planes airtight. Around the door jamb Inventor Zahd would wrap a rubber tube inflated with air at ground-level pressure. In the thin upper air the tube would swell, make an airtight seal.

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