The Corps manned aerostatic balloons and airships and was equipped with a range of laboratories planned by Gaetano Arturo Crocco, plus a wind tunnel.
In 1928, he left the service as a general, was named member of the State Council and from 1938 to 1945 served as president of the Italian Air Registry, the equivalent of the US Federal Aviation Agency.
“After the conquest of the air through aircraft, it is high time to abandon Earth and found new colonies in space” he writes, and then expounds the problem of powering spaceships in the void, without any support from the atmosphere, as in the case of airplanes.
He advocates space travel on the basis of action-reaction dynamics, plans a flight Earth-Moon and to overcome the force of gravity he postulates the need for a new source of power.
In his article, Costanzi describes what would be the dangers and sensations experienced by an astronaut, such as suffering extreme heat, poisonous radiations, G-acceleration and weightlessness, the latter resulting in a feeling of falling.