Science: Conservative Prediction

• Share

Within five years, rockets will be carrying mail and cargo across the Atlantic. Shortly thereafter, they will be carrying passengers. These predictions were made at last week's Chicago meeting of the American Rocket Society by Harry F. Guggenheim, aircraft and rocket pioneer, and a director of the National Aeronautic Association. Guggenheim believes that rockets will cost less than jet airliners and will use less fuel because they will coast most of the way through the almost airless ionosphere.

For 40 years, said Guggenheim, he has been making aeronautical prophecies, and he has tended to err on the conservative side. In 1927, for instance, he predicted (with a good many escape clauses) that "in this generation in which we are living" commercial aircraft would travel at 300 m.p.h. "At that time," said Guggenheim, "I was branded a partisan and a visionary."