Scientific Research in Aeronautical Problems

Abstract

The bearing of pure scientific research on practical scientific developments has been demonstrated again and again ; and interesting and valuable as are all aeronautical attempts, it is more than probable that the solution of flight and aerial navigation may be achieved after all by the physicist or the meteorologist. Just now, this thought is borne in on us by the physical experiments to determine the resistance of the air of M. L'Abbé Le Dantic and M. Canovetti, and by the publication of the annual bulletin of the Meteorological Commission of the Bouches du Rhône. There are some observations in this of the direction, frequency, and force of the wind made at the Marseilles Observatory at the height of 75 m. Such observations are preliminary steps to a meteorological knowledge of the conditions of the lower and upper atmospheres essential to the making of any seasonal maps of the winds; without such maps many practical aeronauts who look to utilising the wind forces for the purposes of motion consider aerial navigation doomed to remain empirical.