Stunts Aloft

"What a mess!" cried irrepressible Jeannette Piccard. "I wanted to land on the White House lawn."

Mrs. Piccard popped her head out of the gondola of the stratosphere balloon in which she and her husband had taken off eight hours before from Detroit's Ford Airport. She found herself on a wooded farm near Cadiz, Ohio. The big bag, limp, torn and empty, was dismally draped over a tall elm. In a treetop the Piccards' U. S. flag flapped bravely.

The Piccard flight barely missed coming to an end at the start last week. After months of waiting the balloon got off the field, two hours behind schedule, in sight of 45,000 spectators including two of the three Piccard children and Henry Ford who had brought 150 moppets in busses to witness the spectacle. When the bag seemed reluctant to rise, airport hands helped by pushing up the gondola. The balloon drifted toward trees fringing the field, seemed certain to crash. Perched in the rigging, Mrs. Piccard frantically threw off lead ballast and the trees were cleared. She climbed inside. The bal loon drifted southeast across Lake Erie, slowly rose to ten miles. Radio communi cation with the ground was fragmentary. Mrs. Piccard worried because she could not see the ground for clouds. Gas was valved and the balloon went down. As it flirted with the treetops, the Piccards donned football helmets. When the bag was snagged by tree branches, the gondola tore loose and dropped.

To see if her pet turtle, Fleur de Lys, came through safely was Mrs. Piccard's first concern. Dr. Jean Piccard, brother of famed ecstatic Stratospherist Auguste Piccard, was tired and the rough landing hurt his foot. He curled up in a blanket and rested. Mrs. Piccard powdered her nose. The sealed barograph went to Washington. The cosmic ray recorders went to Dr. W. F. G. Swarm of Swarthmore's Bartol Research Foundation. A sack of mail went to stamp collectors.

It is possible that, after the customary delay, some startling new scientific information may be forthcoming from last week's adventure. But the record of eight stratosphere flights by man makes it seem unlikely. Whether undertaken for science or as record-breaking stunts they were for the most part either comedies or tragedies. The stratosphere itself was discovered from the ground. In 1896 a French meteorologist named Teisserenc de Bort sent up sounding balloons with automatic instruments, discovered a calm, cold layer of air of uniform temperature, beginning six miles up. In 1927 Captain Hawthorne Gray of the U. S. Army Air Corps went up in an open basket to a height of eight miles, died of exposure on the way down. In 1931. Auguste Piccard. pioneer of the sealed gondola, got up almost ten miles. So carried away was he that he made the astounding comparison of cosmic rays to "rain on a tin roof."* His instruments showed an increasing cosmic ray intensity to the top of his ascent. But by that time Professor Erich Regener at Stuttgart had sent up sounding balloons to 20 miles, had demonstrated increasing cosmic ray intensity to that height, which no stratonaut since has approached. Meanwhile Millikan and Compton were assembling their cosmic ray information and formulating theories from airplane flights, mountain tops, lake bottoms.

In 1933 the first Settle-Fordney flight came to a quick and ignominious end in a Chicago railroad yard. On their second attempt Settle and Fordney reached 61,237 ft., which remains the official record. Much was hoped for, scientifically, from this flight. It had been planned to measure the directional variation of cosmic rays at great heights. The balloon spun round so rapidly during the flight that this could not be done. Jars of fruit flies were to be taken aloft to see if the cosmic rays would produce mutations. While the stratonauts were waiting for good weather the fruit flies died.

Last January three Soviet balloonists were killed when their gondola broke loose from the bag and plunged to earth. Last July the $1,000,000 stratoflight of Kepner and Stevens in the Explorer, biggest bag in history, came to grief when the balloon ripped at 60,000 ft. The balloonists had to take to their parachutes and most of their scientific instruments were smashed to smithereens.

Scientists on the ground have measured wind speeds scores of miles up--by observing the drifting trails of meteors. Without benefit of balloonists Dr. Compton and others learned that cosmic ray intensity varies with latitude, and Dr. T. H. Johnson of the Bartol Foundation demonstrated that more rays come from the west than from the east. Hinting his disillusionment with manned balloons, Dr. Compton has begun a mountaintop and sounding-balloon survey. Dr. Millikan, in the current Physical Review, has kind words to say for the Settle-Fordney flight. In his article he reproduces a strip of film from the automatic electroscope aboard the Settle-Fordney balloon, one of the few real trophies ever brought down from stratonauts' stunts aloft.

* The impact of cosmic radiation is, of course, completely soundless.

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