Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky1857-1935Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a true visionary and pioneer of astronautics. He theorized many aspects of human space travel and rocket propulsion decades before others, and played an important role in the development of the Soviet and Russian space programs.He was born on September 17,1857, in the village of Ijevskoe, Ryasan Province, Russia, the son of a Polish forester who had emigrated to Russia. He was not from a rich family, but a very large one; Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had 17 brothers and sisters. At the age of 10 he lost his hearing as the result of scarlet fever. After that he couldn't attend school, and he never received any formal education. He achieved the knowledge and education that he had attained. His books were his teachers, and he read every book in his father's library. Tsiolkovsky later remembered that his hearing loss influenced greatly his future life: during all his life he tried to prove ...view middle of the document...
e. near the great gas giants. Tsiolkovsky had stated: "Earth is the cradle of mankind; one does not remain in the cradle forever."Tsiolkovsky was an unlikely philosopher of the space movement, working, as he did, as a schoolteacher in rural nineteenth century Russia. However, he anticipated many of the technological elements of human expansion into space. Even more important is the fact that he also foresaw the philosophical issues raised by space exploration.Tsiolkovsky's contributions to space flight were all theoretical; even though he made many models of spacecraft he never actually attempted to launch one. His influence on the world's space program and in particular the Soviet/Russian Space Program was legendary; his major contributions to the space age are as follows:- Tsiolkovsky believed that liquid rockets would be the exploration vehicle for the rocket age because these craft could be throttled, stopped, and restarted. This was far easier than using solid rockets because once a solid rocket is started, it cannot throttled or stopped.- Tsiolkovsky's mathematical calculations demonstrated that liquid-fuelled rockets would be more efficient for space travel because the hotter and lighter the exhaust gases are, the more efficient is the rocket engine. He also stated that liquid hydrogen could be burned to achieve hotter and lighter exhaust gases. This was the first true development of the concept of specific momentum for rocket fuels.- The deaf mathematician also calculated that a rocket must exceed 25,000 miles per hour in order to break free of the Earth's gravitational influence. This condition would be obviously mandatory to travel to the other bodies in the solar system.- Finally, Tsiolkovsky also devised a way of stacking rockets to use the thrust more efficiently to go into Earth orbit. He called this a principle of the sky train. The train gets a boost from cars full of coal (fuel), and as the cars deplete their fuel they are discarded. As the cars are discarded the weight which the train pulls decreases and its speed increases. Similarly, Tsiolkovsky argued, by discarding the used rocket stages after their fuel is spent, the spacecraft accelerates and does not need to waste is power bringing useless weight into space.
