We’re in the middle of a boom in rocketry; sending satellites and people into orbit — and potentially beyond — is no longer just a thing that huge governments can do; there are lots of entities and organizations involved now. The whole endeavor can be traced back to the founders of modern rocketry. One of the most interesting of them is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was born September 17, 1857.
Tsiolkovsky was born in a small town southeast of Moscow, into a family that was the equivalent of middle class for that time and place. He lost his hearing at a young age because of Scarlet Fever, and wasn’t allowed to attend school because of it. He was taught at home, then, after his mother died when he was 13, he taught himself. He was mostly interested in math and physics, and got interested in space travel and rockets after reading Jules Verne’s novels. His father was afraid he’d never be able to support himself, but he passed the exam to become a teacher and got a job in a school in spite of his hearing problem.
He never spent much time in any cities or universities, and lived most of his life in a log cabin in a small town. In spite of this, he managed to make some significant discoveries, and created some very futuristic designs. He published over 90 papers on space travel and similar subjects, and wrote several hundred more that weren’t published during his lifetime. Among other things, he designed multi-stage rockets, steering thrusters for space vehicles, space stations, airlocks, and biological systems that could provide air and food for people living in space. Living in space, he thought, would eventually lead to the perfection of the human species and even provide immortality.
The first aerodynamics laboratory in Russia, including the first wind tunnel, was located in Tsiolkovsky’s home. He studied drag coefficients of various shapes, work that provided the basis for later Russian work in the field. Around 1892 he proposed a metal dirigible, and built a model, but nobody would fund construction of a full-size version. So he worked on designing an airplane instead, and published a design (in 1894!) for a monoplane that looked very much like the airplanes of 20 years later. But once again, nobody would provide backing for some weird guy who lived out in the country.
Around 1896 he published a theory of rocket propulsion, including what’s now called the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, which establishes a formal relationship between rocket speed, its changing mass as it uses fuel, and the exhaust velocity of the rocket engine. He used his equation to calculate how to build a rocket that could achieve earth orbit. He published his spacecraft design in 1903, and it was the basis for all the actual spacecraft built many decades later.
When he turned his attention away from rockets, he designed a gas turbine engine that could be used in a jet airplane. Once again, his work was many years ahead of its time. He also developed the idea of a hovercraft and published a design in 1927 — his design was for a hovercraft train. But his work was never appreciated or put into practice during his lifetime — and evidently he didn’t expect that it would be. He built a model of his dirigible, but in spite of all his work in rocketry, he never built a rocket, even as a model. He wrote philosophical treatises as well, speculating on the possibility of life on other worlds, and in 1933 published the formulation that Enrico Fermi got credit for almost 20 years later as the “Fermi paradox.”
Tsiolkovsky is, belatedly, well recognized today. The town where he lived is now called “Tsiolkovsky,” as is the biggest crater on the far side of the moon. In Russia, the state museum of “cosmonauts” is named after him too. And his name and characters based on him are all over the place in science fiction writing, movies, TV shows, and video games. And if you get the chance to visit the International Space Station, look above the aft hatchway in the Zvezda module — there’s a photo of Tsiolkovsky on the wall.
