Space prophet Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Published 05 June, 2009, 10:42
The father of theoretical astronautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in rural Russia, but his work still managed to influence generations of Soviet rocket engineers and changed the modern world.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had worked out how to travel to space long before anyone ever thought it might happen.
The deaf, self-taught science teacher from rural Russia was reaching for the stars way back at the start of the 20th Century, a time when the motor car and the airplane had only just been invented, and space travel was virtually unimaginable.
Nevertheless, scientist Tsiolkovsky stated, “I'm absolutely sure, based on my theories, that interplanetary journeys will become a reality.”
What Konstantin Tsiolkovsky dreamt of.
 Konstantine Tsiolkovsky's rocket drawing of 1914 |
Incredibly, it mapped out the future means of space-flight: multi-stage rockets fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
Few took any notice in Russia, but when German physicist Hermann Oberth published his thesis with similar ideas a decade later, it was lift-off for Tsiolkovsky's rocket ideas.
“His greatest ideas materialized only after his death. He was a prophet for the space industry,” insists historian Yury Biryukov. “He inspired the pioneers, such as the leading Russian rocket engineer Sergey Korolyov.”
His scientific brilliance is even more remarkable given that he completed only three years of elementary school. Tsiolkovsky said that books were his teachers.
Living in the countryside, he was isolated from the scientific world and largely unaware of the latest discoveries.
But at 24, he independently established the kinetic theory of gases only to be told when he submitted his work that it had already been discovered.
Tsiolkovsky’s great-grandson, Sergey Samburov, decided that he too would dedicate his life to space.
“Two months after Yuri Gagarin’s first flight to space, the legendary cosmonaut said he wanted to meet the family of Tsiolkovsky, and he came to our house,” remembers Sergey. “I was a little boy then. Can you imagine? Gagarin coming to your house! Then I got carried away by space.”
Designs of spinning space ships, space suits, the problems of eating and drinking in zero gravity – Tsiolkovsky had it all in his studies more than 50 years before the first successful satellite, Sputnik, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.
Apart from scientific works, he also wrote fiction about space, providing details which, as time proved, were amazingly accurate.
During his lifetime, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was considered to be more of a dreamer than a practical scientist. To this he responded that, “every human being must live and think as if he or she can achieve anything – sooner or later”; a motto that describes exactly how this incredible man lived his own life.
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