Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

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Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Born	September 17 [O.S. September 5] 1857 Izhevskoye
Died	September 19, 1935 (aged 78) Kaluga
Nationality	Russian/Soviet
Fields	astronautic theory
Known for	Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (Russian: Константи́н Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский; Polish: Konstanty Ciołkowski) (September 17 [O.S. September 5] 1857 – September 19, 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. He is considered by many to be the father of theoretical astronautics.^[1] His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the early success of the Soviet space program.

Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Moscow. A misanthrope by nature, he appeared strange and bizarre to his fellow-town folk.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Edward Tsiolkovsky (in Polish: Ciołkowski), was Polish; his mother, Maria Yumasheva, was an educated Russian (Tatar origin^[2]) woman. His father was a Polish patriot deported to Russia as a result of his revolutionary political activities^{[citation needed]}. At the age of 9, Konstantin caught a serious illness and became hard of hearing.^[3] He was not accepted at elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught.^[3]

Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of spaceflight and the first man to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.

He was also an adherent of philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, and believed that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human race, with immortality and a carefree existence.

Nearly deaf, he worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920. Only from the mid 1920s onwards was the importance of his work acknowledged by others, and Tsiolkovsky was honoured for it. He died on 19 September 1935 in Kaluga and was buried in state.

[edit] Work

Monument to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Moscow

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Tsiolkovsky delved into theories of heavier-than-air flying machines, independently working through many of the same calculations that the Wright brothers were doing at the same time.^{[citation needed]} However, he never built any practical models, and his interest shifted to more ambitious topics. Because Tsiolkovsky's ideas were little known outside Imperial Russia, the field lagged until German and other scientists independently made the same calculations decades later.

In 1923, German physicist Hermann Oberth published his thesis By Rocket into Planetary Space, which triggered wide-scale interest and scientific research on the topic of space flight. It also reminded Friedrich Zander about once having read an article on the subject. After contacting the author, he became active in promoting and further developing Tsiolkovsky's work.^{[citation needed]} In 1924 Zander established the first astronautics society in the Soviet Union, the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel, and later researched and built liquid-fuelled rockets named OR-1 (1930) and OR-2 (1933).

In 1924, a writer for the Russian newspaper Izvestiia reported on A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, a groundbreaking work on the rocketry experiments being done by Robert Goddard, which had been published in 1919 but was not noticed in the Soviet Union until Hermann Oberth referenced it in his later work. When news of the article reached Tsiolkovsky, he decided to republish his early works along with a flurry of new articles about space.^[4]

1 ruble, 1987

Only late in his lifetime was Tsiolkovsky honoured for his pioneering work. On 23 August 1924 he was elected as a first professor of the Zhukovsky Airforce Academy named after N. E. Zhukovsky (Russian: Военно-воздушная академия им. Н. Е. Жуковского).^{[citation needed]}

His most important work, published in 1903, was The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Russian: Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами),^[5] arguably the first academic treatise on rocketry.^{[citation needed]} Tsiolkovsky calculated that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8,000 m/s (5 miles per second) and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

Monument to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Moscow

During his lifetime he published over 500 works on space travel and related subjects, including science fiction novels. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multi-stage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.

Tsiolkovsky had been developing the idea of the air cushion since 1921, publishing fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train" (Russian: Сопротивление воздуха и скорый поезд).^[6][7] In 1929 Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book Space Rocket Trains (Russian: Космические ракетные поезда).

Tsiolkovsky's work influenced later rocketeers throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun^{[citation needed]}, and was also studied by the Americans in the 1950s and 1960s as they sought to understand the Soviet Union's successes in space flight.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Tributes

Draft first space ship by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

• The basic equation for rocket propulsion, the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, is named after him.
• The State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga now bears his name.
• The crater Tsiolkovskiy (the most prominent crater on the far side of the Moon) was named after him, while asteroid 1590 Tsiolkovskaja was named after his wife.^[8][9] (The Soviet Union obtained naming rights by operating Luna 3, the first space device to successfully transmit images of the side of the moon not seen from Earth.^[10])

[edit] In fiction

• SF writer Alexander Beliaev has written a book in which a city and a space station are named after him.
• A fictional ship, the К. Э. Циолковский (K. E. Tsiolkovsky), was named after him for the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The episode it appeared in was entitled "The Naked Now". A copy of the dedication plaque of that vessel, with a rough rendering of Tsiolkovsky's Cyrillic name, was seen in the ship's set dressing. (the artist mistakenly used "З" instead of "Э" for the middle initial, and "п" instead of "л" in the last name).
• A lunar station is named Tsiolkovsky in Stanisław Lem's novel Tales of Pirx the Pilot, story "The Conditional Reflex".
• A space station is named Tsiolkovsky 1 in William Gibson's short story Hinterlands.
• The character Aeolia Schenberg in the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is based on Tsiolkovsky.
• The Zvezda module of the International Space Station has photos of Tsiolkovsky and Yuri Gagarin posted on the wall above the aft hatchway.^[11]
• The computer game Alpha Centauri quotes Tsiolkovsky when the player achieves spaceflight.

[edit] See also

The cover of the book "The Will of the Universe. The Unknown Intelligence." by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1928

• Russian philosophy
• Space exploration
• Spaceflight
• Space colonization
• History of the internal combustion engine
• Timeline of hydrogen technologies
• Tsiolkovsky rocket equation

[edit] Works

• (Russian) Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin E. (1903), "The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами)" (^{[dead link]} – ^{Scholar search}), The Science Review (5), http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/dorev-knigi/ciolkovskiy/issl-03st.html, retrieved 2008-09-22 
• (Russian) Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin E. (1931) (PDF), Origin and an Essence of Music (Происхождение музыки и ее сущность), http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Origin_of_music_by_Tsiolkovsky.pdf, retrieved 2008-09-22 

[edit] Modern day references

• In the computer game, Civilization IV, when the player researches rocketry the quote, "The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot eternally live in a cradle", appears on screen.
• In the movie Far Side of the Moon where the main character is doing research based on Tsiolkovskii's theories.

[edit] Further reading

• Andrews, James T., Red Cosmos: K.E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry, Texas A & M University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60344-168-1^[12]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

• Tsiolkovsky's Imperative in the 21st Century Academic paper
• Tsiolkovsky's house The house museum of Tsiolkovsky
• Virtual Matchbox Labels Museum - Russian labels - Space - Page 2 - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Historic images
• Tsiolkovsky from Russianspaceweb.com
• Spaceflight or Extinction: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Excerpts from "The Aims of Astronautics", The Call of the Cosmos
• The Foundations of the Space Age