The moment man first set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969 marked a milestone in the history of space exploration and manned space missions. But the road to the moon was long and arduous, and Russian mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was one of the brilliant minds who paved the way for the success of the Soviet space program.
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched the first artificial satellite with the R-7 rocket. With its flight into space, Sputnik-1 caused awe in humanity and panic in the USA, lest they be left behind in the space race. But the launch of Sputnik would never have happened had Tsiolkovsky not paved the way, considered by many to be the father of theoretical astronautics and a visionary who even inspired Arthur Clarke.
"It's hard to gauge the true, enormity of Tsiolkovsky's influence on the generation of Soviet rocket designers who built Sputnik," says Asif Siddiqui, a space exploration expert and professor at Fordham University.
Space has haunted Tsiolkovsky's dreams since childhood
Tsiolkofksi was of rather humble origins, a fact which the communist regime was careful to point out later. The son of a Polish patriot who was deported to Russia because of his revolutionary political activity and an educated Russian woman, Tsiolkovsky was born in 1857 in the city of Kaluga, about 200 km southwest of Moscow.
At the age of ten, he caught scarlet fever, the high fever caused serious hearing problems, so he dropped out of school and became self-taught - a reason he was proud of later, stressing that "apart from books, I had no other teachers".
In his late teens he moved to Moscow to study at the famous Rumiantsev Library where he discovered the works of Jules Verne. Many of Verne's space adventures, such as From the Earth to the Moon and On a Comet, were at the time very popular with a worldwide readership, and Tsiolkowski was enthralled by his descriptions of rocket propulsion, space travel and visiting the Moon.
Not only did Tsiolkowski prove that a giant cannon like the one described by Verne in "From the Earth to the Moon" to launch men to the moon would inevitably kill the passengers due to the extreme forces of acceleration, but he also developed his own theories about propulsion.
He reasoned that in order to escape Earth's gravitational pull and attempt space travel one could use liquid fuel and the right ratio of thrust, velocity and mass and developed his theory, which would later become known as "Tsiolkovsky's Equation ” or as “ideal rocket equation”. His calculations probably constitute the first scientifically sound proposal for the use of rockets for space travel and formed the foundation of modern rocket science.
The man who sent Gagarin into space was in the gulag
Drawing inspiration from Verne, Tsiolkovsky also created his own science fiction stories in order to spread the scientific foundations on which his "incredible ideas" were based. In his 1892 play "Man in the Moon" the protagonist in a feverish state dreams that he is with a friend on the moon and describes not only the cold, darkness and weightlessness, but also other details that make it seem more like science lecture, as in the point where he explains that the gravitational pull exerted on the Moon is six times less than that on Earth due to its smaller volume and density of composition. Carl Sagan.
Drawing inspiration from Verne, Tsiolkovsky also created his own science fiction stories in order to spread the scientific foundations on which his "incredible ideas" were based. In his 1892 play "Man in the Moon" the protagonist in a feverish state dreams that he is with a friend on the moon and describes not only the cold, darkness and weightlessness, but also other details that make it seem more like scientific lecture, as in the point where he explains that the gravitational pull exerted on the Moon is six times less than that on Earth due to its smaller volume and density of composition.
In his other works, such as in "Dreams of Earth and Heaven" of 1895, he describes the colonization of space by humans, while also citing sketches of asteroid mining and greenhouses in space. His stories, while not literary works of high aesthetic value, "were pedagogical tools for understanding space travel," says Siddiqui.
In his other works, such as in "Dreams of Earth and Heaven" of 1895, he describes the colonization of space by humans, while also citing sketches of asteroid mining and greenhouses in space. His stories, while not literary works of high aesthetic value, "were pedagogical tools for understanding space travel," says Siddiqui.
Tsiolkovsky also believed in the utopian philosophical theory of Russian cosmism—a religio-philosophical school based on a holistic worldview that everything in the universe, from humans to the infinitesimal grain of sand—has some level of consciousness and when humans die, it is simply transposed into space ready to be resurrected on a planet far away from Earth. It was his adherence to this theory that prompted him to write that "the Earth is the cradle of mankind, but you cannot live forever in the cradle", a phrase later reproduced by Carl Sagan.
The recognition of the visionary of space travel
His writings and research on space travel are popular in Russia today, but for most of his life Tsiolkovsky lived in obscurity. His ideas for liquid propellant and space colonization were often ignored by the scientific community mainly because he had no formal training, no connections to the autocracy, and because his visions seemed unrealistic.
But things changed with the October Revolution of 1917 as his ideas developed uninfluenced by outside influences and his Soviet-centric ideology suited a new regime that wanted to emphasize national pride. In the 1920s, when Tsiolkovsky was in his sixth decade, millions of copies of his works were printed and used as propaganda tools by a totalitarian state trying to prove its supremacy.
In those decades of the 1920s and 1930s, when the pioneers of the Soviet space program were still children, Tsiolkovsky took on almost mythic proportions by telling his countrymen that space exploration was possible. And indeed it was with "Tsiolkovsky's equation" as a basis and his science fiction stories as a source of inspiration that the likes of Tikhonranov, Glushko and Sergei Pavlovich Koroliov sent the first satellite and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, a few decades later to interval.
"He deserves to be considered one of the great pioneers of the space age," says USC Astronautics Professor Mike Grandman. "His effect on the next generation of people who put the Soviet space program into action is beyond doubt."
Tsiolkovsky died on September 19, 1935. His house in Kaluga has been turned into a museum dedicated to the man who conceived the idea of the space elevator, spacesuits and taught Russians to dream of space and to reach for the stars...
Source:iefimerida.gr