Prussia (balloon)

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The balloon being filled with hydrogen
on July 31, 1901

Prussia is the name of the balloon with which the Berlin meteorologists Arthur Berson and Reinhard Süring were the first people to reach a height of more than 10,000 meters on July 31, 1901. This aviation contributed significantly to the discovery of the stratosphere .

prehistory

The balloon was made by the Continental Caoutchouk and Gutta-Percha-Compagnie in Hanover for 20,000  marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 137,000 euros) from rubberized material. It had a capacity of 8,400 cubic meters, which corresponds to a diameter of more than 25 meters. This made it the largest balloon built in Germany to date. When filled with hydrogen , it had a load capacity of ten tons , about two tons being the weight of the balloon envelope and net as well as the basket. It was originally intended for a privately financed long-term trip, which failed on September 23, 1900 after 40 kilometers when the tow got caught on the ground in the dark and strong winds forced the balloonists to give up. Thereupon the owner, the Potsdam building contractor Carl Enders, offered the balloon to the Aeronautical Observatory Berlin-Tegel as a gift in March 1901 . Kaiser Wilhelm II allowed the observatory to accept the present and also granted a sum of 10,000 marks for equipping two ascents. The balloon was now named Prussia .

The donation came in handy for the Aeronautical Observatory. In the 1890s, meteorologists in Germany and France had received indications from the ascent of weather balloons that the air temperature does not decrease steadily with increasing altitude, but increases again beyond an altitude of 10 to 12,000 meters. It was unclear whether the recording measuring instruments used provided reliable values ​​at all and whether the strong solar radiation falsified the measurement results at this altitude. To clarify this question, Richard Assmann , the director of the observatory, planned the simultaneous ascent of a manned and an unmanned balloon to the greatest possible height. With the Prussian he finally had a suitable aircraft at his disposal.

Ramps

The preparatory trip

On July 11, 1901, a preparatory trip took place. The aim was on the one hand to test the balloon, but on the other hand to study the influence of altitude and the diluted atmosphere on the human organism. In addition to the meteorologists and experienced balloonists Arthur Berson and Reinhard Süring , the Viennese doctor and physiologist Hermann von Schrötter took part in the trip, a recognized specialist in the field of acute altitude sickness , who advocated breathing pure oxygen for prevention . The balloon was filled with luminous gas and rose to an altitude of 7,450 meters during the nine-hour journey from Berlin to Pirmasens , with von Schrötter taking measurements of the participants' blood pressure , breathing and pulse rate .

The record run

The record run began on July 31, 1901

The main voyage took place on July 31, 1901. The balloon was filled with 5400 cubic meters of hydrogen from 1080 steel bottles on Tempelhofer Feld . They were brought in on 24 vehicles that had to be loaded several times. The Prussian was held by 24 ground anchors and 300 sandbags weighing 16 kilograms. Two soldiers from the military airship division stood on each of the 48 holding lines. In order to be able to attach enough holding lines, the basket was connected to the balloon envelope with two rings. The ballast , which was attached in several layers outside the basket, consisted of sand and iron filings weighing around 3.5 tons. The preparation for the trip took a total of 4½ hours.

At 10:50 a.m. the balloon took off at a vertical speed of 1.5 m / s and rose until it was filled to the brim at an altitude of 4,500 meters. The balloonists then began to drop ballast. When Süring passed out despite breathing oxygen, Berson operated the valve several times to prevent the balloon from rising further. Before he passed out, he was able to determine an altitude of 10,500 meters. Since the balloon was still rising, the maximum altitude could have been 10,800 meters. The barograph he was carrying could not provide any information about this, as the ink was frozen at an altitude of 10,000 meters. After they woke up, the balloonists landed safely at Briesen near Cottbus .

Although the Prussians had not penetrated into the stratosphere, the good agreement between the readings and the recorded temperatures of a weather balloon launched by Assmann ultimately led to the discovery of the stratosphere.

The ascent on June 24, 1903

The trip taken by Berson and Schrötter served again to study altitude sickness and to refine the measures for its prevention . The use of liquid oxygen should be tried out. The journey began at 8:15 a.m. in Berlin with no wind. After a steady ascent, the balloon reached an altitude of 8,800 meters after eight hours at a temperature of -38 ° C when the oxygen supply ran out. In 1912 Schrötter regretted not having exceeded the 9,000 meter mark. Nevertheless, he was now the living balloonist who had reached the highest altitude after Berson and Süring. After a drive of almost eleven hours, you landed at Uthausen , 15 km southwest of Wittenberg .

ILA 1909

At the first International Airship Exhibition (ILA) from 10 July to 17 October 1909 in Frankfurt am Main , the Prussian became a crowd puller. It formed the center of the large exhibition hall . Visitors were able to enter the inside of the balloon via a lock , which was constantly filled with fresh air. The Lindenberg Aeronautical Observatory exhibited original records of the measuring devices used in the balloon’s record-breaking journey.

Web links

Commons : Preussen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Victor Silberer : Josef Robert Zekéli . In: Wiener Luftschiffer-Zeitung 5, No. 9, 1906, pp. 184-187.
  2. ^ Hermann von Schrötter: Hygiene of Aeronautics and Aviation , Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1912, p. 29, 181.
  3. ^ Note in the Wiener Luftschiffer-Zeitung 2, No. 9, 1903, p. 179.
  4. ^ Hans Steinhagen : The ILA 100 years ago: the birth of the high altitude weather service in Lindenberg . In: Mitteilungen DMG 2/2009, pp. 10–12.