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SWEEPINGS – We reprint here some excerpts from that notorious sheet, “Sweepings.”
Welland High Paper circa 1930s’
WILL MAN REACH MARS?
Arthur Smith
To the average person interplanetary travel is something so improbable that it belongs to the realm of fantastic. To my mind, there is nothing fantastic about it. I am convinced of the feasibility of space travel, and I predict that a successful flight to Mars will be made before the close of this century.
I am aware that there are great difficulties, but these are not insuperable. It is true that the distances are vast (Mars at its nearest is 5,000,000 miles away) but in space you can go a million miles as easily as one. This is because space is almost a perfect vacuum, and thus friction is practically absent.
A frequent objection is that a spaceship would have to obtain a speed of 7 miles per second, and that the acceleration would kill all on board. This is erroneous. Seven miles per second is the speed necessary if the rocket is to cut off its power and continue on momentum. But why not build a ship to travel at a bearable acceleration and keep the rocket blast on?
The greatest difficulty is fuel. The only suitable fuel now known is a mixture of liquid oxygen and gasoline, which is too bulky. However, I am confident science will find something better and thus remove the main obstacle.
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