THE ARCTIC AS AN AIR ROUTE OF THE FUTURE 



207 



these northerly voyages is in the public 

 mind grossly exaggerated, the fact re- 

 mains that for surface craft these really 

 are not "practical" routes from the com- 

 mercial point of view. 



Although realizing the applicability of 

 aircraft to commerce and warfare in our 

 own latitudes, we have not adequately 

 realized their significance in solving, after 

 four hundred years, the problem of the 

 northwest passage and giving us at last a 

 short route from Europe to the Far East. 

 Whether it be in five years or in fifty that 

 aerial transoceanic commerce in tropical 

 and temperate latitudes becomes a com- 

 monplace, transpolar commerce will then 

 be equally common for at least the sum- 

 mer months. 



At present, passenger liners in crossing 

 the Atlantic have winter routes that differ 

 sometimes by several hundred miles from 

 their summer routes. Aircraft will doubt- 

 less be even more free in their variations 

 of route according to season. Indeed, it 

 is probable that the weather bureaus, 

 which will by then have multiplied at 

 least by ten their present great importance 

 to commerce, will publish daily or several 

 times a day maps of the air routes, the in- 

 formation of which will be conveyed by 

 wireless messages to the commanders of 

 aircraft, enabling them to vary from hour 

 to hour the courses they steer, as to lati- 

 tude and longitude and altitude. 



THE AIRMAN MAY CHANGE HIS WIND 



With the sailor on the ocean it is, out- 

 side of the trade- wind belt, almost a mat- 

 ter of accident whether the winds blow 

 him fair or foul, but in the air there may 

 be a fair wind a certain distance up and 

 a head wind either higher or lower. 



The airman may change his wind from 

 fair to foul by raising or lowering his 

 craft. It is, therefore, impossible to say 

 now just where the transpolar air routes 

 will lie, and indeed they will probablv al- 

 ways vary from day to day. But, wher- 

 ever they lie, they are sure to be advan- 

 tageous commercially and popular with 

 passengers, at least during the season 

 corresponding to that in which the tourist 

 of today sails to Alaska or Norway or 

 Spitzbergen to see the midnight sun. 



For the coming popularity of the trans- 

 polar air routes from North Europe to 

 eastern Asia and from North America to 



northern Asia there are four main rea- 

 sons. We shall consider these in their 

 relation to the needs of a passenger who 

 wants to go from England to Japan. 



The first advantage of the polar route 

 is its shortness. The most practical route 

 of the recent past has led from England 

 by way of ocean steamers to Montreal, 

 the Canadian railways to Vancouver, and 

 then by the northerly steamer route along 

 the Aleutian Islands to Japan. This route 

 is approximately 1 1,000 miles from Liver- 

 pool to Yokohama. But the distance from 

 a railway terminus at the north of Great 

 Britain to the north end of Japan proper, 

 where railway travel could be again re- 

 sumed, is by air route only 4,960 miles, 

 or about half the present regular route 

 between the two countries. 



IMMENSE SAVING OE DISTANCE 



To a man in a hurry, whether for per- 

 sonal transportation or the transportation 

 of urgent dispatches, a saving of half the 

 distance, meaning also saving of half the 

 time, will in some cases be extremely im- 

 portant. But the route has other advan- 

 tages, which in other cases may be even 

 more attractive. 



Economy in hydrogen is the second im- 

 portant advantage of the polar route. It 

 is said that helium is for dirigibles a pref- 

 erable gas, not only because it will not 

 explode, but also because it does not ex- 

 pand rapidly with heat. However, helium 

 is at present exceedingly rare, so rare that 

 even were the costliness of it no con- 

 sideration, we would still be at a loss to 

 see how any considerable number of diri- 

 gibles could be operated with that gas. 



Paint the bag silver or any color you 

 will, the amount of heat locally gener- 

 ated by the sun's rays striking the dirigi- 

 ble is great. The hydrogen expands, and 

 there is no practical way as, yet conceived 

 which can avoid the loss of gas. 



You can avoid a bursting of the bag 

 only by allowing the gas to escape. This 

 is the chief factor which limits the length 

 of balloon voyages. A certain amount of 

 gas is lost each day and reciprocally a cer- 

 tain amount of ballast has to be thrown 

 out each night to prevent the balloon from 

 settling to earth. 



But the alternation of day and night, 

 which seems a necessary evil to those 

 habituated to southern latitudes, is not a 



