Konstantin Tsiolkovsky His Life and Work

This book is a story of the life and work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a celebrated scientist and inventor, the father of modern rocketry. He devoted most of his energies to the solution of three scientific and engineering problems: the all-metal dirigible, the aeroplane and the rocket. The most vital and progressive of his discoveries are those dealing with the theory of rocket propulsion. His designs of reaction devices, his methods of studying the dynamics of rocket flight and research into the possibilities of interplanetary travel have become widely known and have won world recognition. Tsiollkovsky’s first original calculations of rocket flight were made at the end of the 19th century and published in 1903. His conclusions were based on elaborate calculation and are strictly scientific. “I could never proceed without calculation. It was calculation that directed by thought and my imagination,” Tsiolkovsky wrote in one of his articles. We are witness of Tsiolkovsky’s scientific ideas an dreams being embodied in long-range rockets, guided missiles and jet aircraft, to which every passing day brings new improvements, while scientific and technical magazines in many countries are seriously discussing the computations for, and design of, rockets, which are to be satellites of the Earth. On the threshold of the 20th century Konstantin Tsiolovsky and Ivan Meshchersky laid the foundation of the new sciences – rocket dynamics and the mechanics of bodies with variable mass. In his chief works published in 1897 and 1904 Meshchersky gave the main equations for the dynamics of a point of variable mass. Tsiolkovsky elaborated the dynamics of the rectilinear motion of the long-range rocket with reaction motor operation on liquid fuel. Tsiolkovsky’s works on rocket dynamics and the theory of interplanetary flight were the first in world scientific literature. They preserve their scientific and practical significance to this day.