Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Russian physicist, key figure in the history of astronautics , known as The Father of Cosmonautics .
Biographical summary
He was born on September 17, 1857 , in Izhevskoye, in the Ryazan province, south of Moscow . The fifth son of a Polish immigrant, he educated himself in the libraries of Moscow and from his father’s books, as he was unable to attend school.
During his youth, Tsiolkovsky nearly drowned in a winter accident, which led to a serious illness that almost caused him deafness. This caused him problems at school and made him an outcast from his peers. The death of his mother, whom he loved very much, eventually turned the boy into a hermit. Despite this, he showed great interest in reading any book he could find and tried to put into practice what he learned.
Tsiolkovsky’s father was an impoverished minor aristocrat of Polish origin who was so impressed by some of his son’s ingenious sketches that he decided to pay for his education in Moscow, but for some unknown reason Tsiolkovsky failed to enter the technical school. However, he decided to stay in Moscow and continue his studies on his own, drawing on books from the city’s only public library. Most of the small monthly allowance he received from his father was spent on books, chemicals, and instruments, leaving the rest for food and clothing. After returning to his native Vyatka, Tsiolkovsky began earning his living by giving private lessons, and then passed the examination that allowed him to become a public school teacher.
Path
For most of his life Tsiolkovsky won little recognition for his scientific works. Instead, his experiments in the provincial town of Borovsk and later in the city of Kaluga earned him a reputation as a “ mad inventor ” among local residents. Recalling his experiences, he referred to a research test in which he skied with a small sail across the frozen river, which frightened the horses. People scolded him, but he did not hear them because of his deafness.
In his early studies he focused on aviation and, above all, on airships. His pet idea was to build a huge metal airship of variable volume that would be kept afloat by hot air instead of hydrogen. For many years Tsiolkovsky was unable to secure funding for his ambitious project. His own income only provided him with small models.
Several decades later, in 1931 , when the scientist had already gained fame and recognition in the Soviet Union , a large test model was built, but the metal aircraft required too many materials and proved unrealizable. The Mayakovskaya station of the Moscow Metro is decorated with details of that project.
It was in the late 1880s that Tsiolkovsky wrote his first work of fiction, in which he described what a man would experience on the Moon .
Although the plot was far from sophisticated and allowed the protagonists to travel around without space suits, the book offered a variety of details about what a lower-gravity environment without Earth’s vital air would be like.
In the last decade of that century, Tsiolkovsky wrote his first serious works on space exploration and rocketry. He believed that jet-powered vehicles were the most promising method of getting into space and moving in a vacuum. Later, he outlined the basic principles of rocket engine construction, including the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propulsion and attitude control instruments.
His research was little known outside the USSR , but it inspired local scientists. In honour of his contribution to space science, the equation determining the ideal motion of a rocket with respect to its mass, the mass of fuel and the exhaust velocity is named after Tsiolkovsky.
His theories on space travel, meanwhile, foreshadowed the creation of solar-powered orbital stations. He was the one who conceived the idea of multistage rockets, although he mistakenly imagined that they would be a convoy of separate vehicles that would make multiple in-flight refuelings before reaching orbit. Another of his ideas was an orbital elevator, which would greatly reduce the cost of transporting cargo into space. This is a concept yet to be realized because there are currently no materials with sufficient strength.
Less well known to the public are Tsiolkovsky’s controversial philosophical works, in which he addresses ideas such as eugenics and the rule of the genies. He believed that space travel was natural for humanity as new technologies developed, but he also agreed with the adherents of transhumanism and believed that humanity should direct its evolution towards making individuals independent of the environment and potentially immortal.
There is also controversy about Tsiolkovsky’s relations with the authorities. The self-taught provincial schoolteacher who made discoveries based on his sheer dedication and the ability of his intelligence was too attractive a figure for propaganda. Even then his noble ancestors were “forgotten.” Some critics argue that his legacy is overrated and his works are in many ways secondary and lacking in scientific value. However, many rocket engineers, from Wernher von Braun to Sergei Korolev, have praised Tsiolkovsky as the person who “showed” them the way.
His ideas made it possible for humans to put the first artificial satellite into orbit and, shortly afterwards, to fly into space for the first time, when Yuri Gagarin placed himself in orbit around our planet in a rocket built according to the principles established by Tsiolkovsky.
His dream of humanity moving away from the proverbial earthly cradle has inspired many and some of his predictions have been astonishingly accurate.
Death
He died on September 19 , 1935 in Kaluga .