Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii

Infobox Scientist
name = Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
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caption = Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
birth_date = OldStyleDate|September 17|1857|September 5
birth_place = Izhevskoye
death_date = September 19, 1935
death_place = Kaluga
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nationality = Russian/Soviet
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field = astronautic theory
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known_for = Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation
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Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky ( _ru. Константин Эдуардович Циолковский; _pl. Konstanty Ciołkowski) (OldStyleDate|September 17|1857|September 5–September 19, 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist of Polish descent and pioneer of the astronautic theory. He spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Moscow.

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 woman. His father was a Polish patriot deported to Russia as a result of his revolutionary political activities. At the age of 10, Konstantin caught a serious illness and became hard of hearingcitation|last=Narins|first=Brigham|title=Notable Scientists from 1900 to the Present|volume=5|pages=2256–2258|publisher=The Gale Group|location=Farmington Hills, MI|year=2001|isbn=078765454X] . He was not accepted at elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught.

Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of human 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.

Work

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.fact|need a reference for the flight calculations| ()|date=September 2008 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.fact|reference for Zander reading Tsiolkovsky and his activities| ()|date=September 2008 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.

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 Military Aerial Academy named after N. E. Zhukovsky ( _ru. Военно-воздушная академия им. Н. Е. Жуковского).fact|reference for first professor| ()|date=September 2008

His most important work, published in 1903, was "The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" ( _ru. Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами), [ru icon citation|last=Tsiolkovsky|first=Konstantin E.|title=The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами)|journal=The Science Review|issue=5|year=1903|url=http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/dorev-knigi/ciolkovskiy/issl-03st.html|accessdate=2008-09-22] arguably the first academic treatise on rocketry.fact|who is arguing?| ()|date=September 2008 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.

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" ( _ru. Сопротивление воздуха и скорый поезд). [citation|last=Gillispie|first=Charles Coulston|title=Dictionary of Scientific Biography|pages=484|year=1980|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|isbn=0684129256] [ru icon citation|title=Air Cushion Vehicle History|publisher=Neptune Hovercraft Shipbuilding Company|url=http://www.hovercraft.ru/history.html|accessdate=2008-09-22] In 1929 Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book "Space Rocket Trains" ( _ru. Космические ракетные поезда).

Tsiolkovsky's work influenced later rocketeers throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braunfact|reference for von Braun influence| ()|date=September 2008, 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.fact|what work was studed?| ()|date=September 2008

Tributes

* 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.
* Tsiolkovskiy crater on the far side of the moon was named after him, while asteroid 1590 Tsiolkovskaja was named after his wife. [citation|title=The Life of Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky|publisher=Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics|url=http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsiol.html|accessdate=2008-09-22] [citation|title=Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky Scientific Biography|publisher=Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics|url=http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsilbio.html|accessdate=2008-09-22]
* A fictional ship, the "К. Э. Циолковский" (K. E. Tsiolkovsky), was named after him for the television series "". 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). "See also its entry at ".
* A space station is named Tsiolkovsky 1 in William Gibson's short story Hinterlands.

ee also

* Russian philosophy
* Space exploration
* Spaceflight
* Space colonization
* History of the internal combustion engine
* Timeline of hydrogen technologies

Works

* citation|last=Tsiolkovsky|first=Konstantin E.|title=The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами)|journal=The Science Review|issue=5|year=1903|url=http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/dorev-knigi/ciolkovskiy/issl-03st.html|accessdate=2008-09-22
* citation|last=Tsiolkovsky|first=Konstantin E.|title=Origin and an Essence of Music (Происхождение музыки и ее сущность)|year=1931|url=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Origin_of_music_by_Tsiolkovsky.pdf|accessdate=2008-09-22

Notes

External links

* [http://www.hudsonfla.com/thesis.htm Tsiolkovsky's Imperative in the 21st Century] Academic paper
* [http://phillumeny.onego.ru/labels/russian/space/page2/page2.html Virtual Matchbox Labels Museum - Russian labels - Space - Page 2 - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky] Historic images
* [http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tsiolkovsky.html Tsiolkovsky] from Russianspaceweb.com
* [http://www.spaext.com/info/tsiolkovsky/index.html Spaceflight or Extinction: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky] Excerpts from "The Aims of Astronautics", "The Call of the Cosmos"
* [http://www.astronautix.com/articles/theceage.htm The Foundations of the Space Age]