Evening Star Newspaper, October 19, 1930, Page 92

[ THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, OCTOBER 19, 1530. Future of the Dirigible Lies With Helium The United States, the Only Nation in the World Able to Produce the Non-Flam- mable Wonder- Gas of Aviation, Is Urging the Sharing of Its Supply With Foreign Countries to Prevent the Recurrence of Such a Disaster as Occurred to the R-101—The Story of Helium a Romance of Science. BY HUDSON GRUNEW ALD. UCH a disaster as recently befell the world’s largest aircraft, when the hydrogen-filled British dirigible R-101 . burst into & flaming inferno that consumed 48 lives can be prevented in g 81 $scip E??!s HIT 3] el R k| ;sfiffiéi -5-% FEREE acquire and seal’ for future use the best"helium-pro- gas h&:; that experiments must be Picture radioed from London showing policeurfingueo] cbe‘cha‘-nd bod:es out of the wreckage of the R-101, near Beauvais, France. “The extent of the disaster,” declares Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, chief of the United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, “is undoubtedly due to the R-101 hoving been inflated with hydrogen gas.” opened the way for the exportation of our helium. . That the helium supply in the United States Mnmmmmwmd'mflfldAbm W ashington, D. C., on December 5, 1921. 1«mmamfivmmu begun. According to a statement made by the Bureau The helium separation unit at the United States Bureau of Mines helium plant, near Amarillo, Tex. as a new element in 1868, when a group of scientists turned a spectroscope on the sun phere which merges into the corona, and was given the name “helium” from the Greek word “helios,” meaning the sun. But it was not until a quarter of a century later that ter- restial helium was discovered when Sir Wil- liam Ramsay, a British scientist, Hillebrand of the United States Geological Survey, but he had failed to ident'fy the helium in it. Helium, present in the sun, stars and cer- tain mebulae has been found in the earth’s atmosphere in the of 1 part in 185,000 patrs. It has also been found in minute quantities in sea and river water, in most of the older rocks and minerals, in the gases evolved from mineral springs and in some vol- canic and fumarole gases, but in none of these is there sufficlent helium for production. It was not until its discovery in certain na-