Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
1857 – 1935 Russian rocket theorist, schoolteacher, cosmist thinker
Self-taught Russian theorist who derived the rocket equation and imagined spaceflight decades before it was possible.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a deaf, largely self-taught provincial schoolteacher who worked out the mathematics of spaceflight in isolation. His 1903 paper derived the rocket equation, relating a rocket's change in speed to its exhaust velocity and the mass of propellant burned, and argued that liquid-fueled, multistage rockets could reach orbit. He also envisioned space stations, airlocks, and human colonies beyond Earth, and his cosmist philosophy saw humanity's destiny in the cosmos. Little known abroad in his lifetime, he became a revered founding figure of the Soviet space program.
Connections
- mentor of Sergei Korolev — His writings inspired Korolev and the Soviet rocket program.
- influenced Wernher von Braun — A founding theorist whose rocket equation underlay all later rocketry.
In the timeline
- 1903 Tsiolkovsky publishes the rocket equation author