Page:Sim pall-mall-magazine 1904-01 32 129.pdf/23

 17 balloon runs no risk of bursting in the air ; but the price paid for this immunity is great loss of gas and, consequently, a fatal shortening of the spherical balloon's stay in the air. Some day a spherical balloonist will close up that hole. Indeed, they already talk of doing it.

I was obliged to do it in my air-ship balloon, whose cylindrical form must be preserved at all cost. For me there must be no transformations as from apple to pear. Interior pressure only could guarantee me this. The valves to which I refer have, since my first experiments, been of all kinds, some very ingeniously interacting, others of extreme simplicity. But their object in each case has always been the same — to hold the gas tight in the balloon up to a certain pressure and then let only enough of it out to relieve dangerous interior pressure. It is easy to realise, therefore, that, should these valves refuse to act adequately, the danger of bursting would be there.

This possible danger I acknowledge to myself ; but it had nothing to do with fire from the explosive motor. Yet, during all my preparations, and up to the moment of calling "Let go all!" the professional aeronauts, completely overlooking this weak point of the air-ship, continued to warn me against fire.

"Do we dare strike matches in the basket of a spherical balloon?" they asked. "Do we even permit ourselves the solace of a cigarette on trips that last for many hours?"

To me the cases did not seem the same. In the first place, why should one not light a match in the basket of a spherical balloon? If it be only because the mind vaguely connects the ideas of gas and flame, the danger remains as ideal. If it be because of a real possibility of igniting gas that has escaped from the free hole in the stem of the spherical balloon, it would not apply to me. My balloon, hermetically closed except when excessive pressure should let either air or a very little gas escape through one of the automatic valves, might for a moment leave a little trail of gas behind it as it moved on horizontally or diagonally, but there would be none in front where the motor was.

In this first air-ship I had placed the gas escape-valves even farther from the motor than I place them to day ; the suspension-cords being very long, I hung in my basket far below the balloon. Therefore I asked myself : " How could this motor, so far below the balloon and so far in front of its escape-valves, set fire to the gas enclosed in it, when such gas is not inflammable until mixed with air?" 2