Tsiolkovskiy: A visionary

Although the Russian scientific elite was primarily concentrated in centers such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, far from two capitals, a modest physics teacher conceived some of the most remarkable ideas about the future of the human race.

In his visionary 1903 work, "The Exploration of the World's Space with Jet-Propulsion Instruments," Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy proposed and described the rocket as a tool for interplanetary travel. Almost unknown to its contemporaries, Tsiolkovskiy's work decades later was universally accepted as a theoretical foundation of modern astronautics.

Biography

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17, 1857, in the village of Izhevskoe in the Ryazan Province, south of Moscow. Konstantin, or Kostya for short, was fifth out of 18 children in the family.

Konstantin's father -- Polish immigrant Eduard Ignatievich Tsiolkovsky -- came to work to Izhevskoe as a forester in June 1849. At the time the family settled in Izhevskoe, the village was booming; with the population of 7,628 it was the fourth largest settlement in the Ryazan Province.

In Ryazan and Vyatka

Soon after Kostya�s birth, his father had to leave his job in the village of Izhevskoe. From November 1857 to April 1858, the family temporarily lived in the village of Dolgoe of Pronskiy Uezd (Town of Pronsk) with the parents of Konstantin's mother, after which the family settled in Ryazan, where it remained for 10 years. There an event took place that would change Tsiolkovsky�s life forever. "Age of 10 or 11, at the beginning of winter, I rode a toboggan," he later wrote, "Caught a cold. Fell ill, was delirious. They thought I�d die, but I got better, but became very deaf and deafness wouldn�t go. It tormented me very much."

The nearly complete loss of hearing left bright and active Kostya impaired for the rest of his life. At the same time, biographers agree, the disability made him turn to books and stimulated his lifelong drive for learning.

In 1868, the Tsiolkovsky family moved to Vyatka, some 500 miles northeast of Ryazan, where Kostya entered the town�s school for boys. Public education was a struggle, however, and he eventually was suspended at the age 14. From then on, Tsiolkovsky was entirely self-educated. "Besides books I had no other teachers," he later wrote.

Moscow period

From Vyatka, the family sent 16-year-old Konstantin to Moscow, where he taught himself at Chertkovskaya Library, which held the country's finest collection of books. Konstantin studied mathematics, analytical mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, as well as classical literature. Unfortunately, his father could send only kopecks to support him. "I ate just black bread, didn't have even potatoes and tea," he later remembered. "Instead I was buying books, pipes, sulfuric acid (for experiments), and so on. I was happy with my ideas, and black bread didn't upset me at all."

Tsiolkovsky�s arrival in Moscow coincided with profound economic and social changes in Russian society. With the abolition of feudal dependency in 1861, masses of freed peasants started moving into the city, providing the workforce for a newly industrializing Russia. The arts and sciences flourished in this changing world. It was the age of Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy. Dmitri Mendeleev developed the first periodic table of elements, and Nikolai Zhukovsky did his pioneering work on aerodynamics.

In Moscow, Tsiolkovsky met Nikolai Fedorov, an eccentric Russian philosopher whose theory of "cosmism" had a profound effect on young Kostya. Fedorov prophesied that progress in science would eventually allow humans to achieve immortality and even resurrect long-dead ancestors. The population would swell so much that humanity would have to spread across the universe.

According to his biographers, these were the ideas that awakened Tsiolkovsky�s interest in reaching outer space. Around this time, he also discovered the novels of French science fiction and adventure writer Jules Verne, such as "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865), which inspired a whole generation of spaceflight pioneers.

"I do not remember how it got into my head to make first calculations related to rocket," Tsiolkovsky later wrote, "It seems to me the first seeds were planted by famous fantaseour, J. Verne."

Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Tsiolkovsky did more than simply marvel at Verne�s descriptions of fantastic journeys. He questioned their practicality. He understood that shooting spacecraft from a giant cannon, Verne's method of reaching the moon, would inevitably kill its passengers due to the force of acceleration.

Return to Ryazan

In 1876, upon request of his father, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, had returned to Vyatka. Two years later, Konstantin's father retired and the family returned to Ryazan In September 1879, upon his return to Ryazan, Tsiolkovsky�s years of self-directed study paid off when he passed the exam to get a teacher's certificate. Around that time Konstantin began drafting his first scientific work, which later became a base for the book "Grezy o Zemle i Nebe" (Dreams of Earth and Sky). (159)

Also in Ryazan, Tsiolkovsky, built a centrifuge to simulate different levels of gravity and test their effects on chickens.

Borovsk period

In January 1880, the Ministry of Education assigned 22-year-old Konstantin to teach arithmetic and geometry in the local school (Uezdnoe Uchilishe) in the town of Borovsk, Kaluga Region. In comparison to Ryazan it was a backwater, located about 70 miles south of Moscow. Borovsk had a reputation as a town of truck farmers and traders, whose drunken fistfights and belief in witchcraft made them the laughingstock of the neighboring towns. It was here that Tsiolkovsky settled and raised a family.

In Borovsk, in August 1880, Tsiolkovsky married Varvara Sokolova, the daughter of a local preacher. The couple rented several houses during their 12 years in Borovsk, one of which became a museum when the 140th anniversary of the scientist's birth was celebrated in 1997.

While in Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky experimented with physical processes, particularly the properties of gases. Unaware about the latest discoveries in the field, Tsiolkovsky wrote "Theory of Gases," describing kinetic properties of gases. Experiments with gases gave Tsiolkovsky ideas for a theoretical work titled "Svobodnoe Prostranstvo," or "Free Space." Completed in 1883, it wasn�t published until 1956, long after his death. In it, Tsiolkovsky made the first attempt in his decades-long effort to describe the meaning of the cosmos for humanity and the effects that vacuum and weightlessness would have on future space travelers.

The manuscript also contained a sketch considered to be one of Tsiolkovsky�s earliest depiction of a spacecraft. A simple drawing shows what looks like spacesuited travelers in weightlessness; a cannon-like machine to propel the craft through the vacuum; and finally, primitive gyroscopes to control the orientation of the ship in space.

Also in Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky started drafting designs for airships, which, along with rocketry, would remain a passion for the rest of his life. His first work on the subject, published in 1892, proposed an airship with metal skin. However, Tsiolkovsky's attempts to sell the idea to the Russian military were unsuccessful. (2)

Kaluga period

In February 1892, Tsiolkovskiy was promoted to another teaching position, in the provincial capital of Kaluga, which must have seemed a metropolis compared to Borovsk. Tsiolkovsky would remain in Kaluga until his death in 1935, and it was there that he created the monumental body of work that secured his place as a prophet of the Space Age.

Kaluga period

In February 1892, Tsiolkovskiy was promoted to another teaching position, in the provincial capital of Kaluga, which must have seemed a metropolis compared to Borovsk. Tsiolkovsky would remain in Kaluga until his death in 1935, and it was there that he created the monumental body of work that secured his place as a prophet of the Space Age. He started with the studies of aircraft and science fiction writing. In his 1894 article, entitled "Airplane, or Bird-like flying machine," Tsiolkovsky proposed the idea of a fully metal aircraft with aerodynamically advanced shape.

In 1895, he published "Grezy o Zemle i Nebe" (Dreams of the Earth and Sky) (see photo of the cover), which describes mankind�s settlement of space, complete with characters who mine asteroids and build orbital greenhouses.

Since around 1896, Tsiolkovsky studied extensively the theory of jet propulsion. In 1903, he succeeded in publishing a manuscript titled "Exploration of the Universe with Reaction Machines" in Nauchnoe Obozrenie (Scientific Review) magazine.

Today this work and several follow-on articles written in 1911, 1912 and 1914 are universally recognized as the world's first scientifically sound proposals to use rockets for exploring space. For decades afterward the work would stun readers with the completeness and level of detail with which Tsiolkovsky designed his spaceship. The mathematical relation he formulated between the changing mass of a rocket as it burns fuel, the velocity of exhaust gases, and the rocket�s final speed has since become known as Tsiolkovsky�s formula, and is considered one of the foundations of the science of astronautics.

Amazingly, more than two decades before Robert Goddard launched the world�s first liquid-fueled rocket, Tsiolkovsky fueled his theoretical engine with a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the same combination used today on the Space Shuttle, and still considered the most efficient of rocket propellants. Tsiolkovsky arrived at the combination with little hope of testing his theory. He never attempted to build a rocket engine, let alone a spaceship. His discoveries stemmed from a thorough grounding in physics and mathematics, an awareness of the latest achievements in technology (for example, James Dewar first liquefied hydrogen in 1898), and a gift for prediction.

For all its prescient brilliance, Tsiolkovsky's manuscript reached Nauchnoe Obozrenie at a bad time, just after its publisher had died and the magazine was about to fold. (Some sources say that manuscript was sent to the magazine five years before it was actually published.)

Only a few copies of the magazine were distributed before the press run was confiscated, according to Galina Sergeeva, deputy director for scientific research at the State Museum of Cosmonautics, located near Tsiolkovsky�s house in Kaluga. "Until the 1960s it was believed that this work had never made it outside Russia, when, with the help of American researchers, a copy of Nauchnoe Obozrenie containing Tsiolkovky�s article was discovered in the Library of Congress," Sergeeva said.

Publication dates for Tsiolkovsky�s early works became an issue years later when he and his followers, both in the USSR and abroad, struggled to establish the scientist's priority in postulating key astronautical concepts. In the 1920s, Tsiolkovsky learned about the work of German space pioneer Hermann Oberth, who, working with no knowledge of Tsiolkovsky's writing, published his key proposals for rocket-powered spaceflight in 1923. Tsiolkovsky wrote to Oberth, asserting his rights as the the first to conceive of rocket flight.

"Tsiolkovsky deeply cared about his priority in the field," said his granddaughter Elena Timoshenkova, director of the museum that has been made from the Tsiolkovsky's house in Kaluga, "He often published his work himself and would send it to leading scientists. However, there was almost no response. He understood precisely that he was a genius, one of those people who move humanity forward,� Sergeeva adds. Ironically, it was Oberth who later helped make Tsiolkovsky�s name widely known in the West.

In 1926, Tsiolkovsky published, a bold 16-step program whereby human civilization could outlive its dying sun and settle the universe. The scheme called for rocket-powered airplanes, the use of plants for life support, and solar radiation to grow food and supply energy. He predicted the need for spacefarers to use pressurized suits when leaving the spacecraft, and envisioned the construction of large orbital settlements. According to Tsiolkovsky, humans would colonize the asteroid belt, the solar system, and ultimately the galaxy.

That work was followed three years later by "The Space Rocket Trains", which advanced Tsiolkovsky�s earlier thoughts about multistage rockets. His calculations proved that building a rocket with separate stages, each of which would be jettisoned as it finished consuming its propellants, would allow a payload to be accelerated indefinitely.

Tsiolkovsky�s publications are full of ideas that would later become common practice in aerospace engineering. He proposed using graphite rudders to steer a rocket in flight, cryogenic propellants to cool combustion chambers and nozzles, and pumps to drive propellant from storage tanks into the combustion chamber. He considered human factors as well�at the dawn of the Space Age, the first cosmonauts were amazed by the accuracy of Tsiolkovsky�s descriptions of life in weightlessness.

Tsiolkovsky and his time

Few Tsiolkovsky's contemporaries recognized the significance of his writings. To his neighbors in Kaluga, he was just an eccentric schoolteacher. According to Galina Sergeeva, the townspeople "sometimes saw this almost deaf old man walking along the street, mumbling something incomprehensible to himself."

In 1899 Tsiolkovsky started teaching physics and math at Kaluga�s Religious School for Girls, and many of his pupils would later recount fond memories of him. "He was able to explain difficult things in really simple terms," says Sergeeva, citing the former students. According to Tsiolkovsky's own recollections, 1,500 girls and 1,500 boys

Modern pilgrims to the Tsiolkovsky house � a two-story wooden cottage the family bought in 1905 � are taken through a gate into a small garden squeezed between the house and the property next door. Inside, the cottage is modest, almost ascetic: white walls, simple wooden furniture. The most luxurious touch on the first floor is a large chimney covered with glossy tiles decorated with traditional Russian ornaments.

From the hallway, a steep stairway goes up to Tsiolkovsky�s workroom and lab. According to Timoshenkova, Russian cosmonauts, who made frequent visits to the house, nicknamed the steps the "space stairway." At the top of the stairs is a trap door. "His children knew," Timoshenkova says, "when this door was closed, nobody could go upstairs to bother him. He was very strict with his children, but became much softer with the grandchildren."

(One of Tsiolkovsky's children, Ignaty, who was born in 1883, committed suicide in 1902, during his years in Moscow University.) (165)

Tsiolkovsky's office has a writing desk and another desk on which are displayed various gadgets of the time, including a camera with an old-fashioned accordion-like case. A telescope rests on a wooden tripod by the desk. One of the windows faces a terrace that served as the scientist's lab, which for Russians is probably the most recognizable part of the Kaluga house. A long joiner's bench runs along the main wall, and a model of a metal airship is suspended from the ceiling. In a corner is the scientist's bicycle, which Timoshenkova believes was one of the first in Kaluga. In the 1930s, Tsiolkovsky was often seen riding his bike in the city's main park, which remained one of his favorite places until his last days.

Ciolkowski's father wasnt a polish immigrant but a Pole deported to east Russia. If i remember well both Ciolkowski's father and mother were punished that way for revolutionary antirusian activity.

And his name was Ciolkowski, not Tsiolkovsky.

well, its a polish surname so should be written correct, not in rusicised form