Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most thoroughly matured in his own mind. In twenty years of aëronautics he had worked out his ideas and theories in the greatest detail. He had not been blind to the problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air, but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction that might lend itself to guidance through the air, had evidently not struck him as feasible, and was not brought to any kind of success until several years later under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to steer his balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as already said, oblong, with a front and back. The front was provided with two portholes fitted with heavy glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations in the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist, he knew that, once his car was in the air, the great bag was almost certain to begin spinning and to travel through the air at various speeds, increasing the rate of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater. That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow for the gondola seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée had his own ideas as to this. The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to any great heights, or to subject himself to the rotating action which is one of the unpleasantnesses and perils of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern of his gondola three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long, which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen pigtails. In the center of each hundred-yard length of rope was a thinner spot or safety escapement, by means of which the lower half of any one of the ropes could be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for releasing all of the rope or ropes. These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s steering gear and antiwhirling apparatus. His intention was to fly at an elevation of somewhat less than one hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his three ropes trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of any open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was expected to keep his gondola pointed forward by means of its dragging effect. Realizing that one or all of the ropes might become entangled in some manner with objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might wreck the gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements to let go the lower half or all the ropes.