November 19 1924
SIR Samuel Hoare, Secretary for Air, accompanied Sir Philip Sassoon, Under Secretary, and Sir Geoffrey Salmond, member of the Air Council, paid an informal visit to Cardington yesterday to see what progress is being made with the Government programme of airship development preparatory to the inauguration of an airship service in India.
The programme includes the enlargement of the Cardington airship shed to the length of 812ft, height of 157ft, and width of 180ft, so that it will be the largest in the world, and the building of the R101, which will be the largest airship in the world, her length being 720ft, with a capacity of five million cubic feet and a maximum speed of 70 miles an hour. There will be accommodation for a hundred passengers. She is expected to be completed by the end of 1926.
Sir Samuel Hoare said they were now definitely embarked upon an airship policy. They would, however, proceed with the greatest care so as to minimise risk.
The R101 airship crashed on one of its first trips in October 1930, in France, on its way from Britain to India, killing 48 of the 54 on board, including the Air Minister Lord Thomson. The crash essentially ended Britain’s interest in airship development.
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Is there light on Mars?
THE recent observation of the planet Mars has apparently yielded more important results than were thought likely at the time.
Now – nearly three months after the day of nearest approach – a statement has been published which shows that extremely valuable, perhaps startling, information has been obtained by some observers.
Mr GH Hamilton, writing to the “Times” from Mandeville, Jamaica, states that “the observation made by [Giovanni] Schiaparelli and [Percival] Lowell may be considered as having been completely vindicated by the planet itself; the personality of the observer cannot come into question, since the details observed this year has been so obvious that all theorising as to its reality would be superfluous”.
“It is very probable”, says Mr Hamilton, “that this particular presentation of the planet’s disc has opened up an entirely new viewpoint in Martian theorising”.
This looks as if Mr Hamilton’s observations will reopen the whole question of the habitability of Mars.
100 years before Elon Musk is seeking to move us to Mars to survive as a species, pioneering astronomy work was being conducted to understand the planet’s terrain more.
