Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), Russian rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. He is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group)
School period
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Young Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
College/University
Career
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
1930
Portrait of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1930. (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Kaluga, Russian Federation
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, pioneer scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics), standing with his all-metal airship models in his workshop in 1913, in Kaluga, USSR. (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), pioneer Russian scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics). (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), pioneer Russian scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics). (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Gallery of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Photography of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Soviet scientist who is supposed to have evolved the first theories of jet propulsion and multi-stage missiles.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, pioneer scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics), standing with his all-metal airship models in his workshop in 1913, in Kaluga, USSR. (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), pioneer Russian scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics). (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), pioneer Russian scientist in the field of rockets and space travel (cosmonautics). (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group)
Photography of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Soviet scientist who is supposed to have evolved the first theories of jet propulsion and multi-stage missiles.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a Russian research scientist in aeronautics and astronautics who pioneered rocket and space research and the development and use of wind tunnels for aerodynamic studies. He was also among the first to work out the theoretical problems of rocket travel in space.
Background
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17, 1857, in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family.
His father, Edward Tsiolkovsky, was Polish; his mother, Maria Yumasheva, was an educated Russian woman of Tartar descent. His father was an orthodox priest of Polish descent deported to Russia as a result of his political activities.
Education
Konstantin's childhood was not too easy. At the age of 10, he suffered from scarlet fever, which was regarded as a life-threatening disease back then. He recovered, but his sense of hearing was affected, and he became deaf. This made it difficult for the boy to pay attention in school. As a result, he resorted to homeschooling. To make things worse for him, his mother passed away when he was just 13 years old.
He studied almost all the basic subjects. Being homeschooled gave him enough time to study several books on topics that interested him greatly. He became increasingly addicted to reading books related to physics and mathematics. During his teenage years, he started fantasizing about space travel and believed that if humans ever colonized space, it would lead to immortality and a carefree existence.
Konstantin was almost always reading books and working on his theories, which had his father worried about his future and well-being. His father thought that Konstantin, being deprived of formal education, would not be able to make enough money for himself and his family.
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).
Also in Ryazan, Tsiolkovsky, built a centrifuge to simulate different levels of gravity and test their effects on chickens.
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.
While in Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky experimented with physical processes, particularly the properties of gases. Unaware of 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.
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.
In 1894 Tsiolkovsky designed a monoplane that was not flown until 1915. He built the first Russian wind tunnel in 1897. He also was an insightful visionary who thought a great deal about the uses of his beloved rockets to explore and master space. He was the author of Investigations of Outer Space by Rocket Devices (1911) and Aims of Astronauts (1914). Although rockets had been in use since their invention in twelfth-century China as weapons that evolved from fireworks, it was Tsiolkovsky who used mathematics and physics to study and model the manner in which they operated, called rocket dynamics. In 1903 he published the rocket equation in a Russian aviation magazine. Called the Tsiolkovsky formula, it established the relationships among rocket speed, the speed of the gas at the exit, and the mass of the rocket and its propellant. This equation is the basis of much of the spacecraft engineering done today. In 1929 he published his theory of multistage rockets, based on his knowledge of propulsion dynamics.
Although Tsiolkovsky often criticized traditional religions for their "primitive" explanation of the world, he himself saw the universe in almost theological terms, as a higher being that controls life on Earth and beyond. "We are at the will of and controlled by Cosmos," he wrote in a work titled "Is There God?" "There is no absolute will - we are marionettes, mechanical puppets, machines, movie characters." Obviously, these were not ideas that fit well with official Marxist ideology.
Views
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky expressed the idea of creating near-Earth stations as artificial settlements and bases for interplanetary communications. He made a significant contribution to the theory of the motion of missiles and put forward a number of ideas that have found application in rocket engineering, in particular, the gas rudders for controlling the flight of a rocket, the types of fuel, and its supply systems. Tsiolkovsky developed the theory of multistage rockets, first solved the problem of the motion of a rocket in an inhomogeneous gravitational field, considered the effect of the atmosphere on the flight of a rocket, and also calculated the necessary fuel reserves to overcome the forces of resistance of the Earth's air envelope. In the 30s he developed the theory of the flight of jet aircraft in the stratosphere and the design of aircraft for flight with hypersonic speeds.
Tsiolkovsky also had great faith in a vision of mankind successfully expanding beyond Earth, in triumphant colonization of space. He famously wrote, "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever." He believed that someday, humans would be able to colonize the Milky Way using their technological advancement.
Quotations:
"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever."
"Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space."
"There is no God-Creator, but there is the Cosmos, which creates suns, planets, and living beings. There is no omnipotent God, but there is the Universe, which governs the fates of all celestial bodies and their inhabitants. There are no sons of God, but there are mature and thus rational and perfect sons of the Cosmos. There are no personal gods, but there are elected leaders of planets, solar systems, stellar groups, milky ways, islands of ether, and the whole Cosmos. There is no Christ, but there is a brilliant man and a greater teacher of mankind."
Personality
Apart from science fiction, Tsiolkovsky had an interest in philosophy.
Interests
Reading
Writers
Jules Verne
Connections
In Borovsk, in August 1880, Tsiolkovsky married Varvara Sokolova, the daughter of a local preacher. The couple raised two children, Ignaty and Lyubov.
Ignaty, who was born in 1883, committed suicide in 1902, during his years at Moscow University.