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Show capacity and the vastly longer time It can remain in the air, and. consequently, consequent-ly, the longer voyages It Is able to take, render it much more valuable than' the aeroplane for long-sustained military reconnobsance, and it will, unquestionably, become an Important and permanent adjunct of military equipment. The aeroplane, or heavler-than-ajr machine, while It will find its greatest great-est use In military equipment and as a sporting craft, still has much promise prom-ise of practical utility for travel In cross-country flight, carrying rrom one person up to as many passengers as are now carried by an average-Blzed automobile. There never will be such a thing as commercial aerial freighters. freight-ers. Freight will continue to drag its slow length along the patient earth. Doth tho dirigible and the aeroplane will be of very great value in exploring, explor-ing, surveying and mapping parts ol the earth's surface difficult to reach or otherwise inaccessible. Bird's-eye-view photography, whicn the surveyor lias already successfully employed by means of cameras attached at-tached to kites and even to carrier pigeons, will be of very great service to the civil engineer In tho location ot railroads an,d other work and In map-making, map-making, while in military operations the flying machine will keep contending contend-ing armies fully informed of the positions, po-sitions, operations and movements ot one another. The modern Dreadnaught costs ton millions of dollars, and battleships aro now proposed costing fifteen millions of dollars. Flying machines of the aeroplane type can probably be mado in large numbers in the near future at an actual first cost of six hundred dollars each, capable of carrying two soldiers with a substantial equipment of light arras, tools, and high explosives ex-plosives for raiding purposes. Thus, at the cost of the latest thing In battleships, bat-tleships, twenty-five thousand aeroplanes aero-planes could be constructed, capable of transporting an army or fifty thousand thous-and men, armed with a substantial equipment for raiding and for guerrilla warfare. Thcso are serious considerations. THE FLYING MACHINE, Hudson Maxim says: To sum up briefly the prospects of the flying machine: ma-chine: Although the dirigible, or Hchter-thanalr machine, can never have wide practical use except for sport, for surveying and for military operations, ita much greater carrying |
