Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Eduardo Konstantin Ziolkowski (Russian Константин Эдуардович Циолковский, scientific transliteration Konstantin Ėduardovič Ciolkovskij; * 5.jul / September 17 1857greg in Ischewskoje, .. Ryazan province, † September 19, 1935 in Kaluga ) is considered one of the pioneers of space travel. He was the founder of modern astronautics.
Ziolkowski is the most famous amateur researchers in this field. His technical vision, however, was known only to his life and the inspiration for many later scientists and technicians.
Life
Ziolkowski was born 1857 in Ischewskoje as the son of Polish-born Orthodox priest Edward Ziolkovsky and a Russian Tatar origin named Maria Jumaschowa. At the age of ten years Ziolkowski was nearly deaf by scarlet fever and had to leave school. He taught himself further, and was sent by his family to study in Moscow. There he studied physics, astronomy, mechanics and geometry.
After three years Ziolkowski was brought back by his father home. After that he gave in his hometown of instruction in mathematics and physics, until he was appointed in 1882 as a mathematics teacher at the school district of Borovsk in the province of Kaluga. In the meantime he had married and had become a father. During the Russian Revolution, he lived a very secluded life.
Inspired by science fiction and stories of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky began writing stories about interplanetary space travel. In it he incorporated more and more physical and technical problems and thereby became the author of theoretical treatises. From about 1885 he turned to a variety of considerations for the implementation of space missions, turned his attention here also all-metal airships to.
Ziolkowski 1886 published the study Theoria Aerostatika that followed 1892, the Aerostat Metallitscheski (theory of all-metal airship ). In the 1880s, he developed a concept for all-metal airship which was implemented in the 1930s as ZMC -2. Until his death, he published 35 books, articles and papers on the airship theme.
In 1895 he proposed a space tower and a space elevator.
In a room in his apartment, he built the first wind tunnel in Russia and certain air resistances of different objects. Increasingly, he began to devote himself to the rocket research. He realized that the solid rocket boosters previously used for fireworks and military purposes would be too weak to reach outer space. Therefore, he suggested the use of liquid rocket fuels (hydrogen, oxygen, and hydrocarbons ).
Culmination of his work was the Rocket Equation, which he in 1903 in the Russian magazine Science Rundschau under the title: published exploration of space by means of chemical reactors. Ancillary works for liquid rocket engine, cooling the combustion chamber and control of the missile by means of thruster and gyro control he exhibited with the Rocket Equation also the principle of multi-stage rocket on a scientific basis. He also dealt with questions of operating space stations, the industrial use of outer space and the use of its resources.
Importance and appreciation
With his ideas Ziolkowski was a visionary way ahead of his time and was thus in Tsarist Russia very little attention. Only with the publication of Hermann Oberth's book The Rocket into Interplanetary Space in 1923, which sparked wide international resonance and apply as the actual birth of a now ever-increasing scientific study of rocketry and space travel can be, the Russian-German author Friedrich Zander ( reminded often Fridrik Tsander called ) again a magazine article, he had once read. He came into contact with Ziolkowski and published a book on Ziolkowski and his works, which Ziolkowski was known to a wider Russian and international audience. In the political system of the Soviet Union the work Ziolkowski found now recognition and support. His ideas were extremely popular. So the spaceship in the novel Aelita the writer Alexei Tolstoy is almost identical to the ideas Ziolkowski.
Along with Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard applies Konstantin Tsiolkovsky as a thought leader and pioneer of space travel. His last two publications are the album of cosmic travel from 1932 and the highest rate in rocket of 1935. However, it was not given the chance to experience the practical application of his ideas. Ziolkowski predicted the beginning of space for 1950 ( actually 1957: Sputnik ) and the first man in space in 2000 ( actually 1961: Yuri Gagarin ).
To honor a crater Tsiolkovsky on the far side of the Moon and the asteroid were named (1590) Tsiolkovskaja after him. His former residential building in Kaluga is now a museum.
The USSR coined in 1987 to commemorate his 130th birthday from a Kupfer-/Nickellegierung a 1- ruble coin weighing about 17 grams and a diameter of 31 millimeters.
Quotes
- "It is true that Earth is the cradle of mankind, but man can not stay forever in the cradle. The Solar System is our nursery. "
Works
In German, published science fiction works:
- On the Moon. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin / GDR 1956
- Outside the earth. Heyne Verlag, Munich 1977
- Suffering and Genius (1916 ), The ideal order of life (1917 ), the genius among men (1918 ), The Living Universe (1918 ), The organization of the people on Earth (1918 ), The gradation of laws for communities of different categories ( 1919), new spheres of knowledge ( 1931-1933 ), The Cosmic Philosophy ( 1935). In: Boris Groys, Michael Hagemeister (eds. ): The New Humanity. Biopolitical utopias in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005 ( stw 1763 ), pp. 236-390