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S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée (1854–97),〔Andrée, christened Salomon August, invariably went by his initials as an adult.〕 the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass, with luck, straight over the North Pole on the way. The scheme was received with patriotic enthusiasm in Sweden, a northern nation that had fallen behind in the race for the North Pole. Andrée ignored many early signs of the dangers associated with his balloon plan. Being able to steer the balloon to some extent was essential for a safe journey, and there was plenty of evidence that the drag-rope steering technique he had invented was ineffective; yet he staked the fate of the expedition on drag ropes. Worse, the polar balloon ''Örnen'' (''The Eagle'') was delivered directly to Svalbard from its manufacturer in Paris without being tested; when measurements showed it to be leaking more than expected, Andrée refused to acknowledge the alarming implications of this. Most modern students of the expedition see Andrée's optimism, faith in the power of technology, and disregard for the forces of nature as the main factors in the series of events that led to his death and those of his two companions Nils Strindberg (1872–97) and Knut Frænkel (1870–97).〔This assessment is discussed in several contexts in ''Vår position är ej synnerligen god…'' by Andrée specialist Sven Lundström, curator of the (Andreexpedition Polarcenter ) in Gränna, Sweden (see for example p. 131).〕 After Andrée, Strindberg, and Frænkel lifted off from Svalbard in July 1897, the balloon lost hydrogen quickly and crashed on the pack ice after only two days. The explorers were unhurt but faced a grueling trek back south across the drifting icescape. Inadequately clothed, equipped, and prepared, and shocked by the difficulty of the terrain, they did not make it to safety. As the Arctic winter closed in on them in October, the group ended up exhausted on the deserted Kvitøya (White Island) in Svalbard and died there. For 33 years the fate of the Andrée expedition remained one of the unsolved riddles of the Arctic. The chance discovery in 1930 of the expedition's last camp created a media sensation in Sweden, where the dead men had been mourned and idolized. Andrée's motives have since been re-evaluated, along with assessing the role of the polar areas as the proving-ground of masculinity and patriotism. An early example is Per Olof Sundman's fictionalized bestseller novel of 1967, ''The Flight of the Eagle,'' which portrays Andrée as weak and cynical, at the mercy of his sponsors and the media. (This was later adapted and filmed as ''Flight of the Eagle'', 1982, directed by Jan Troell.) The verdict on Andrée by modern writers for virtually sacrificing the lives of his two younger companions varies in harshness, depending on whether he is seen as the manipulator or the victim of Swedish nationalist fervor around the turn of the 20th century.〔See Kjellström, p. 45, Lundström, p. 131, Martinsson.〕 ==S. A. Andrée's scheme== The second half of the 19th century has often been called the Heroic Age of polar exploration.〔For instance, in the title of John Maxtone-Graham's popularized narrative, ''Safe Return Doubtful: The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration'', which has a chapter on the Andrée expedition.〕 The inhospitable and dangerous Arctic and Antarctic regions appealed powerfully to the imagination of the age, not as lands with their own ecologies and cultures, but as challenges to be conquered by technological ingenuity and manly daring. The Swede Salomon August Andrée shared these enthusiasms, and proposed a plan for letting the wind propel a hydrogen balloon from Svalbard across the Arctic Sea to the Bering Strait, to fetch up in Alaska, Canada, or Russia, and passing near or even right over the North Pole on the way. Andrée was an engineer at the patent office in Stockholm, with a passion for ballooning. He bought his own balloon, the ''Svea'', in 1893 and made nine journeys with it, starting from Gothenburg or Stockholm and travelling a combined distance of . In the prevailing westerly winds, the ''Svea'' flights had a strong tendency to carry him uncontrollably out to the Baltic Sea and drag his basket perilously along the surface of the water and/or slam it into one of the many rocky islets in the Stockholm archipelago (see artist's impression, right). On one occasion he was blown clear across the Baltic to Finland. His longest trip was due east from Gothenburg, across the breadth of Sweden and out over the Baltic to Gotland. Even though he saw a lighthouse and heard breakers off Öland, he remained convinced that he was travelling over land and seeing lakes.〔Lundström, pp. 12—16.〕 During a couple of the ''Svea'' flights, Andrée tested and tried out the drag-rope steering technique which he had developed and wanted to use on his projected North Pole expedition. Drag ropes, which hang from the balloon basket and drag part of their length on the ground, are designed to counteract the tendency of lighter-than-air craft to travel at the same speed as the wind, a situation that makes steering by sails impossible. The friction of the ropes was intended to slow the balloon to the point where the sails would have an effect (beyond that of making the balloon rotate on its axis). Andrée reported, and presumably believed, that with drag rope/sails steering he had succeeded in deviating about ten degrees either way from the wind direction. This notion is rejected by modern balloonists; the Swedish Ballooning Association maintains that Andrée's belief that he had deviated from the wind was mistaken,〔 ("Andrées färder" ). Svenska Ballong Federationen.〕 being misled by inexpertise and a surfeit of enthusiasm in an environment of variable winds and poor visibility.〔Swedish Ballooning Association, cited (without further details) in 〕 Use of drag ropes (prone to snapping, falling off, or becoming entangled with each other or the ground, in addition to being ineffective) is not considered by any modern expert to be a useful steering technique.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「S. A. Andrée's Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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