Who was Tsiolkovsky Konstantin Eduardovich really? Interesting facts about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Tsiolkovsky is

Russian Soviet scientist and inventor in the field of aerodynamics, rocket dynamics, the theory of aircraft and airship, the founder of modern cosmonautics Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17 (September 5 according to the old style), 1857 in the village of Izhevskoye, Ryazan province, in the family of a forester.

Since 1868, together with his parents, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky lived in Vyatka (now Kirov), where he studied at the gymnasium.

After suffering from scarlet fever in childhood, he almost completely lost his hearing. Deafness did not allow him to continue his studies at the gymnasium, and from the age of 14 Tsiolkovsky studied independently.

From 1873 to 1876 he lived in Moscow and worked in the library of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the Russian State Library), studied chemistry and physical and mathematical sciences.

In 1876 he returned to Vyatka and.

In the fall of 1879, Tsiolkovsky externally passed the exams at the Ryazan gymnasium for the title of teacher of district schools.

In 1880, he was appointed teacher of arithmetic and geometry at the Borovsk district school in the Kaluga province. For 12 years Tsiolkovsky lived and worked in Borovsk. In 1892, he was transferred to serve in Kaluga, where he taught physics and mathematics at a gymnasium and a diocesan school.

Tsiolkovsky, almost from the very beginning of his career, combined teaching with scientific work. In 1880-1881, not knowing about the discoveries already made, he wrote his first scientific work, The Theory of Gases. His second work, published in the same years, "The Mechanics of the Animal Organism", received positive reviews from leading scientists and was published. After its publication, Tsiolkovsky was admitted to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society.

In 1883, he wrote the work "Free Space", where he first formulated the principle of operation of a jet engine.

Since 1884, Tsiolkovsky worked on the problems of creating an airship and a "streamlined" airplane, since 1886 - on the scientific justification of rockets for interplanetary flights. He systematically worked on the development of the theory of motion of jet vehicles and proposed several of their schemes.

In 1892, his work "Metal controlled balloon" (about an airship) was published. In 1897, Tsiolkovsky designed the first wind tunnel in Russia with an open test section.

He developed an experimental technique in it and in 1900, with a subsidy from the Academy of Sciences, he made blowing through the simplest models and determined the drag coefficient of a ball, flat plate, cylinder, cone and other bodies.

In 1903, the journal Nauchnoye Obozreniye published Tsiolkovsky's first article on rocketry, "Investigation of World Spaces with Reactive Devices," which substantiated the real possibility of using reactive devices for interplanetary communications.

It went unnoticed by the broad scientific circles. The second part of the article, published in the journal "Bulletin of Aeronautics" in 1911-1912, caused a great resonance. In 1914, Tsiolkovsky published a separate pamphlet "Supplement to" The Study of World Spaces with Reactive Instruments ".

After 1917, his scientific work received state support. In 1918, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was elected a member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences (since 1924 - the Communist Academy).

In 1921, the scientist left his teaching job. During these years, he worked on the creation of a theory of jet aircraft flight, invented his own scheme of a gas turbine engine.

In 1926-1929, Tsiolkovsky developed the theory of multi-stage rocket science, solved important problems related to the movement of rockets in an inhomogeneous gravitational field, landing a spacecraft on the surface of planets devoid of an atmosphere, considered the influence of the atmosphere on rocket flight, put forward ideas about creating a rocket - an artificial satellite of the Earth and near-Earth orbital stations.

In 1932, he developed the theory of jet flight in the stratosphere and the design of aircraft with hypersonic speeds.
Tsiolkovsky is the founder of the theory of interplanetary communications. His research for the first time showed the possibility of achieving cosmic speeds, the feasibility of interplanetary flights and the exploration of outer space by man. He was the first to consider the biomedical problems that arise during long-term space flights. In addition, the scientist put forward a number of ideas that have found application in rocket science. They proposed gas rudders for controlling the flight of a rocket, the use of propellant components for cooling the outer shell of a spacecraft, and much more.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (Polish Konstanty Ciołkowski) (September 5 (17), 1857, Izhevsk, Ryazan province, Russian Empire - September 19, 1935, Kaluga, USSR). Russian and Soviet self-taught scientist and inventor, school teacher. Founder of theoretical astronautics.

Tsiolkovsky justified the use of rockets for flights into space, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to use "rocket trains" - prototypes of multi-stage rockets. His main scientific works relate to aeronautics, rocket dynamics and astronautics.

Representative of Russian cosmism, member of the Russian Society of Lovers of the World.

Tsiolkovsky proposed to populate outer space using orbital stations, put forward the ideas of a space elevator, hovercraft trains. He believed that the development of life on one of the planets of the Universe would reach such power and perfection that it would make it possible to overcome the forces of gravity and spread life throughout the Universe.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky came from the Polish noble family of Tsiolkovsky (Polish Ciołkowski) of the Yastrzhembets coat of arms. The first mention of the belonging of the Tsiolkovskys to the nobility dates back to 1697.

According to family tradition, the Tsiolkovsky family traced its genealogy to the Cossack Severin Nalivaiko, the leader of the anti-feudal peasant-Cossack uprising in the Russian lands of the Commonwealth in 1594-1596.

Answering the question of how the Cossack family became noble, the researcher of Tsiolkovsky's work and biography, Sergei Samoilovich, suggests that the descendants of Nalivaiko were exiled to the Plock Voivodeship, where they became related to a noble family and adopted their surname - Tsiolkovsky. This surname allegedly came from the name of the village of Tselkovo (that is, Telyatnikovo, Polish Ciołkowo).

However, modern research does not confirm this legend. The genealogy of the Tsiolkovskys has been restored approximately to the middle of the 17th century, their relationship with Nalivaiko has not been established and is only in the nature of a family legend. Obviously, this legend impressed Konstantin Eduardovich himself - in fact, it is known only from himself (from autobiographical notes). In addition, in the copy of the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron that belonged to the scientist, the article “Nalivaiko” is crossed out with a charcoal pencil - this is how Tsiolkovsky marked the most interesting places for himself in books.

It is documented that the founder of the clan was a certain Maciej (Polish Maciey, in modern Polish spelling Maciej), who had three sons: Stanislav, Yakov (Jakub, Polish Jakub) and Valerian, who became owners of the villages of Velikoye Tselkovo after the death of their father, Small Tselkovo and Snegovo. The surviving record says that the landlords of the Plotsk province, the Tsiolkovsky brothers, took part in the election of the Polish king Augustus the Strong in 1697. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is a descendant of Yakov.

By the end of the 18th century, the Tsiolkovsky family was greatly impoverished. In the context of a deep crisis and the collapse of the Commonwealth, the Polish nobility also experienced hard times.

In 1777, 5 years after the first partition of Poland, the great-grandfather of K. E. Tsiolkovsky Tomash (Foma) sold the Velikoye Tselkovo estate and moved to the Berdichevsky district of the Kiev province in Right-Bank Ukraine, and then to the Zhytomyr district of the Volyn province. Many subsequent representatives of the family held small positions in the judiciary. Without any significant privileges from their nobility, they for a long time forgot about him and about their coat of arms.

On May 28, 1834, the grandfather of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, Ignatius Fomich, received certificates of "noble dignity" so that his sons, according to the laws of that time, had the opportunity to continue their education. Thus, starting with the father of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, the family regained its noble title.

Constantine's father Eduard Ignatievich Tsiolkovsky(1820-1881, full name - Makar-Eduard-Erasmus, Makary Edward Erazm). Born in the village of Korostyanin (now Malinovka, Goshchansky district, Rivne region in northwestern Ukraine). In 1841 he graduated from the Forest and Survey Institute in St. Petersburg, then served as a forester in the Olonetsk and St. Petersburg provinces. In 1843 he was transferred to the Pronskoye forestry of the Spassky district of the Ryazan province. Living in the village of Izhevsk, he met his future wife Maria Ivanovna Yumasheva(1832-1870), mother of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Having Tatar roots, she was brought up in the Russian tradition. The ancestors of Maria Ivanovna under Ivan the Terrible moved to the Pskov province. Her parents, small landed nobles, also owned a cooperage and basket workshop. Maria Ivanovna was an educated woman: she graduated from high school, knew Latin, mathematics and other sciences.

Almost immediately after the wedding in 1849, the Tsiolkovsky couple moved to the village of Izhevskoye in the Spassky district, where they lived until 1860.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 5 (17), 1857 in the village of Izhevsk near Ryazan. He was baptized in St. Nicholas Church. The name Konstantin was completely new in the Tsiolkovsky family, it was given by the name of the priest who baptized the baby.

At the age of nine, Kostya, sledding at the beginning of winter, caught a cold and fell ill with scarlet fever. As a result of a complication after a serious illness, he partially lost his hearing. Then came what later Konstantin Eduardovich called "the saddest, darkest time of my life." Hearing loss deprived the boy of many childhood amusements and impressions familiar to his healthy peers. At this time, Kostya for the first time begins to show interest in craftsmanship. “I liked to make puppet skates, houses, sleds, watches with weights, etc. All this was made of paper and cardboard and connected with sealing wax”, he will write later.

In 1868, the land surveying and taxation classes were closed, and Eduard Ignatievich again lost his job. The next move was to Vyatka, where there was a large Polish community and two brothers lived with the father of the family, who, probably, helped him get the post of head of the Forest Department.

During their life in Vyatka, the Tsiolkovsky family changed several apartments. For the last 5 years (from 1873 to 1878) they lived in an outbuilding of the estate of the merchants Shuravins on Preobrazhenskaya Street.

In 1869, Kostya, together with his younger brother Ignatius, entered the first class of the male Vyatka gymnasium. The study was given with great difficulty, there were many subjects, the teachers were strict. Deafness was very disturbing: “I didn’t hear the teacher at all or heard only obscure sounds”.

In a letter dated August 30, 1890, Tsiolkovsky wrote: “Once again I ask you, Dmitry Ivanovich, to take my work under your protection. The oppression of circumstances, deafness from the age of ten, the resulting ignorance of life and people, and other unfavorable conditions, I hope, will excuse my weakness in your eyes..

In the same year, sad news came from St. Petersburg - the elder brother Dmitry, who studied at the Naval College, died. This death shocked the whole family, but especially Maria Ivanovna. In 1870, Kostya's mother, whom he dearly loved, died unexpectedly.

Grief crushed the orphaned boy. Even without that he did not shine with success in his studies, oppressed by the misfortunes that fell on him, Kostya studied worse and worse. Much more acutely did he feel his deafness, which prevented him from studying at school and made him more and more isolated. For pranks, he was repeatedly punished, ended up in a punishment cell.

In the second grade, Kostya remained for the second year, and from the third (in 1873) an expulsion followed with a characterization "for admission to a technical school". After that, Konstantin never studied anywhere - he studied exclusively on his own. During these studies, he used his father's small library (which contained books on science and mathematics). Unlike gymnasium teachers, books generously endowed him with knowledge and never made the slightest reproach.

At the same time, Kostya joined the technical and scientific creativity. He independently made an astrolabe (the first distance measured by her was to the fire tower), a home lathe, self-propelled carriages and locomotives. The devices were driven by coil springs, which Konstantin extracted from old crinolines bought on the market.

He was fond of tricks and made various boxes in which objects appeared and disappeared. Experiments with a paper model of a balloon filled with hydrogen ended in failure, but Konstantin does not despair, continues to work on the model, thinks about the project of a car with wings.

Believing in his son's abilities, in July 1873, Eduard Ignatievich decided to send Konstantin to Moscow to enter the Higher Technical School (now Bauman Moscow State Technical University), providing him with a cover letter to his friend asking him to help him get settled. However, Konstantin lost the letter and remembered only the address: Nemetskaya Street (now Baumanskaya Street). Having reached her, the young man rented a room in the laundress's apartment.

For unknown reasons, Konstantin never entered the school, but decided to continue his education on his own. Living literally on bread and water (his father sent 10-15 rubles a month), he began to work hard. “Apart from water and black bread, I then had nothing. Every three days I went to the bakery and bought 9 kopecks worth of bread there. Thus, I lived 90 kopecks a month ". To save money, Konstantin moved around Moscow only on foot. He spent all his free money on books, instruments and chemicals.

Every day from ten in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, the young man studies science in the Chertkovo public library - the only free library in Moscow at that time.

In this library, Tsiolkovsky met with the founder of Russian cosmism, Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, who worked there as an assistant librarian (an employee who was constantly in the hall), but did not recognize the famous thinker in a modest employee. “He gave me forbidden books. Then it turned out that he was a well-known ascetic, a friend of Tolstoy and an amazing philosopher and modest. He distributed all his tiny salary to the poor. Now I see that he also wanted to make me his boarder, but he did not succeed: I was too shy., - Konstantin Eduardovich later wrote in his autobiography.

Tsiolkovsky admitted that Fedorov replaced his university professors. However, this influence manifested itself much later, ten years after the death of the Moscow Socrates, and during his residence in Moscow, Konstantin knew nothing about the views of Nikolai Fedorovich, and they never once spoke about the Cosmos.

Work in the library was subject to a clear routine. In the morning, Konstantin was engaged in exact and natural sciences, which required concentration and clarity of mind. Then he switched to simpler material: fiction and journalism. He actively studied "thick" journals, where both review scientific articles and journalistic articles were published. He enthusiastically read Shakespeare, Turgenev, admired the articles of Dmitry Pisarev: “Pisarev made me tremble with joy and happiness. In him I saw then my second "I"".

During the first year of his life in Moscow, Tsiolkovsky studied physics and the principles of mathematics. In 1874, the Chertkovo Library moved to the building of the Rumyantsev Museum, and Nikolai Fedorov moved to a new place of work with it. In the new reading room Konstantin studies differential and integral calculus, higher algebra, analytic and spherical geometry. Then astronomy, mechanics, chemistry.

For three years, Konstantin fully mastered the gymnasium program, as well as a significant part of the university one.

Unfortunately, his father was no longer able to pay for his accommodation in Moscow, and besides, he felt unwell and was going to retire. With the knowledge gained, Konstantin could well begin independent work in the provinces, as well as continue his education outside of Moscow.

In the autumn of 1876, Eduard Ignatievich called his son back to Vyatka, and Konstantin returned home.

Konstantin returned to Vyatka weakened, emaciated and emaciated. Difficult living conditions in Moscow, hard work also led to a deterioration in vision. After returning home, Tsiolkovsky began to wear glasses. Having regained his strength, Konstantin began to give private lessons in physics and mathematics. I learned my first lesson through my father's connections in a liberal society. Having shown himself to be a talented teacher, in the future he had no shortage of students.

At the end of 1876, Konstantin's younger brother Ignatius died. The brothers were very close from childhood, Konstantin trusted Ignatius with his innermost thoughts, and the death of his brother was a heavy blow.

By 1877, Eduard Ignatievich was already very weak and ill, the tragic death of his wife and children had an effect (except for the sons of Dmitry and Ignatius, during these years the Tsiolkovskys lost their youngest daughter, Catherine - she died in 1875, during the absence of Konstantin), the head of the family left resign. In 1878 the entire Tsiolkovsky family returned to Ryazan.

Upon returning to Ryazan, the family lived on Sadovaya Street. Immediately after his arrival, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky underwent a medical examination and was released from military service due to deafness. The family intended to buy a house and live on the income from it, but the unforeseen happened - Konstantin quarreled with his father. As a result, Konstantin rented a separate room from the employee Palkin and was forced to look for other means of subsistence, since his personal savings accumulated from private lessons in Vyatka were coming to an end, and in Ryazan an unknown tutor could not find students without recommendations.

To continue working as a teacher, a certain, documented qualification was required. In the autumn of 1879, at the First Provincial Gymnasium, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky took an external exam for a county mathematics teacher. As a "self-taught", he had to take a "full" exam - not only the subject itself, but also grammar, catechism, worship and other compulsory disciplines. Tsiolkovsky was never interested in these subjects and did not study them, but he managed to prepare himself in a short time.

Having successfully passed the exam, Tsiolkovsky received a referral from the Ministry of Education for the position of a teacher of arithmetic and geometry in the Borovsk district school of the Kaluga province (Borovsk was located 100 km from Moscow) and left Ryazan in January 1880.

In Borovsk, the unofficial capital of the Old Believers, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky lived and taught for 12 years, started a family, made several friends, and wrote his first scientific works. At this time, his contacts with the Russian scientific community began, the first publications were published.

Upon arrival, Tsiolkovsky stayed in hotel rooms on the central square of the city. After a long search for more comfortable housing, Tsiolkovsky - on the recommendation of the inhabitants of Borovsk - "got on bread with a widower and his daughter, who lived on the outskirts of the city" - to E. E. Sokolov - a widower, priest of the Edinoverie church. He was given two rooms and a table of soup and porridge. Daughter Sokolova Varya was only two months younger than Tsiolkovsky. Her character and diligence pleased him, and soon Tsiolkovsky married her. They got married on August 20, 1880 in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. Tsiolkovsky did not take any dowry for the bride, there was no wedding, the wedding was not advertised.

In January of the following year, the father of K. E. Tsiolkovsky died in Ryazan.

In the Borovsky district school, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky continued to improve as a teacher: he taught arithmetic and geometry outside the box, came up with exciting problems and set amazing experiments, especially for Borovsky boys. Several times he launched with his students a huge paper balloon with a “gondola”, in which there were burning torches, to heat the air. Sometimes Tsiolkovsky had to replace other teachers and teach drawing, drawing, history, geography, and once even replace the superintendent of the school.

After classes at the school and on weekends, Tsiolkovsky continued his research at home: he worked on manuscripts, made drawings, and experimented.

The very first work of Tsiolkovsky was devoted to the application of mechanics in biology. She became an article written in 1880 "Graphic depiction of sensations". In this work, Tsiolkovsky developed the pessimistic theory of “agitated zero” characteristic of him at that time, mathematically substantiated the idea of ​​the meaninglessness of human life (this theory, according to the scientist’s later admission, was destined to play a fatal role in his life and in the life of his family). Tsiolkovsky sent this article to the Russian Thought magazine, but it was not published there and the manuscript was not returned, and Konstantin switched to other topics.

In 1881 Tsiolkovsky wrote his first truly scientific work. "Theory of gases"(manuscript not found). Once he was visited by a student Vasily Lavrov, who offered his help, as he was heading to St. following works by Tsiolkovsky). The Theory of Gases was written by Tsiolkovsky on the basis of the books he had. Tsiolkovsky independently developed the foundations of the kinetic theory of gases.

Soon Tsiolkovsky received an answer from Mendeleev: the kinetic theory of gases was discovered 25 years ago. This fact was an unpleasant discovery for Konstantin, the reasons for his ignorance were isolation from the scientific community and lack of access to modern scientific literature. Despite the failure, Tsiolkovsky continued his research.

The second scientific work submitted to RFHO was the article of 1882 "Mechanics is like a changing organism".

The third work written in Borovsk and presented to the scientific community was the article "Duration of the Sun's Radiation"(1883), in which Tsiolkovsky described the mechanism of action of a star. He considered the Sun as an ideal gaseous sphere, tried to determine the temperature and pressure at its center, and the lifetime of the Sun. Tsiolkovsky in his calculations used only the basic laws of mechanics (the law of universal gravitation) and gas dynamics (the Boyle-Mariotte law).

The article was reviewed by Professor Ivan Borgman. According to Tsiolkovsky, he liked it, but since there were practically no calculations in its original version, "it aroused distrust." Nevertheless, it was Borgman who proposed to publish the works presented by the teacher from Borovsk, which, however, was not done.

The members of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society unanimously voted to accept Tsiolkovsky into their ranks, as reported in a letter. However, Konstantin did not answer: “Naive savagery and inexperience,” he lamented later.

Next work by Tsiolkovsky "Free space" 1883 was written in the form of a diary. This is a kind of mental experiment, the narration is conducted on behalf of an observer who is in free airless space and does not experience the action of forces of attraction and resistance. The main result of this work can be considered the principle first formulated by Tsiolkovsky about the only possible method of movement in "free space" - jet propulsion.

One of the main problems that occupied Tsiolkovsky almost from the time of his arrival in Borovsk was the theory of balloons. Soon, he realized that this was the task that should be given the most attention.

In 1885, he decided to devote himself to aeronautics and theoretically develop a metal controlled balloon.

Tsiolkovsky developed a balloon of his own design, resulting in a voluminous essay "Theory and experience of a balloon with an elongated shape in the horizontal direction"(1885-1886). It provided a scientific and technical justification for the creation of a completely new and original design of an airship with a thin metal shell. Tsiolkovsky gave drawings of general views of the balloon and some important components of its design.

While working on this manuscript, P. M. Golubitsky, already a well-known inventor in the field of telephony, visited Tsiolkovsky. He invited Tsiolkovsky to go with him to Moscow, to introduce himself to the famous Sofya Kovalevskaya, who had come for a short time from Stockholm. However, Tsiolkovsky, by his own admission, did not dare to accept the offer: “My squalor and the resulting savagery prevented me from doing this. I didn't go. Maybe it's for the best."

Refusing to go to Golubitsky, Tsiolkovsky took advantage of his other offer - he wrote a letter to Moscow, professor of Moscow University A. G. Stoletov, in which he spoke about his airship. Soon a response letter arrived with a proposal to speak at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum at a meeting of the Physics Department of the Society of Natural Science Lovers.

In April 1887, Tsiolkovsky arrived in Moscow and after a long search found the museum building. His report was entitled "On the possibility of building a metal balloon capable of changing its volume and even folding into a plane." It was not necessary to read the report itself, only to explain the main provisions. The audience reacted favorably to the speaker, there were no fundamental objections, and several simple questions were asked. After the report was completed, an offer was made to help Tsiolkovsky settle in Moscow, but no real help was forthcoming.

On the advice of Stoletov, Konstantin Eduardovich handed over the manuscript of the report to N. E. Zhukovsky.

In 1889, Tsiolkovsky continued to work on his airship. Considering the failure in the Society of Natural Science Lovers as a consequence of the insufficient study of his first manuscript on the balloon, Tsiolkovsky writes a new article "On the possibility of building a metal balloon"(1890) and, together with a paper model of his airship, sent it to D. I. Mendeleev in St. Petersburg. Mendeleev, at the request of Tsiolkovsky, transferred all the materials to the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS).

But Tsiolkovsky was refused.

In 1891, Tsiolkovsky made another, last, attempt to protect his airship in the eyes of the scientific community. He wrote a great work "Metal controlled balloon", in which he took into account the comments and wishes of Zhukovsky, and on October 16 sent it, this time to Moscow, to A. G. Stoletov. Again there was no result.

Then Konstantin Eduardovich turned to his friends for help and ordered the publication of the book in the Moscow printing house of M. G. Volchaninov with the funds raised. One of the donors was a school friend of Konstantin Eduardovich, the famous archaeologist A. A. Spitsyn, who at that time was visiting the Tsiolkovskys and conducting research on ancient human sites in the area of ​​St. Pafnutiev Borovsky Monastery and at the mouth of the Isterma River. The book was published by a friend of Tsiolkovsky, a teacher at the Borovsky School, S. E. Chertkov. The book was published after Tsiolkovsky's transfer to Kaluga in two editions: the first in 1892; the second - in 1893.

In 1887, Tsiolkovsky wrote a short story "On the Moon" - his first science fiction work. The story largely continues the traditions of "Free Space", but is clothed in a more artistic form, has a complete, albeit very conditional, plot. Two nameless heroes - the author and his friend, a physicist - unexpectedly end up on the moon. The main and only task of the work is to describe the impressions of the observer who is on its surface. Tsiolkovsky's story is notable for its persuasiveness, the presence of numerous details, and rich literary language.

The Tsiolkovskys had four children in Borovsk: eldest daughter Lyubov (1881) and sons Ignatius (1883), Alexander (1885) and Ivan (1888). The Tsiolkovskys lived in poverty, but, according to the scientist himself, "they did not go in patches and never went hungry." Konstantin Eduardovich spent most of his salary on books, physical and chemical devices, tools, and reagents.

On April 23, 1887, on the day Tsiolkovsky returned from Moscow, where he made a report on a metal airship of his own design, a fire broke out in his house, in which manuscripts, models, drawings, a library, as well as all the property of the Tsiolkovskys, except for a sewing machine, were lost, which managed to be thrown through the window into the courtyard. It was a hard blow for Konstantin Eduardovich, he expressed his thoughts and feelings in the manuscript "Prayer" (May 15, 1887).

On January 27, 1892, the director of public schools, D.S. Unkovsky, turned to the trustee of the Moscow educational district with a request to transfer "one of the most capable and diligent teachers" to the district school of the city of Kaluga. At this time, Tsiolkovsky continued his work on aerodynamics and the theory of vortices in various media, and also expected the publication of the book "Metal controlled balloon" in a Moscow printing house. The decision to transfer was made on February 4th.

Tsiolkovsky lived in Kaluga for the rest of his life. Since 1892 he worked as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry in the Kaluga district school. Since 1899, he taught physics at the diocesan women's school, disbanded after the October Revolution. In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky wrote his main works on astronautics, jet propulsion theory, space biology and medicine. He also continued work on the theory of a metal airship.

After completing his teaching, in 1921, Tsiolkovsky was granted a personal lifetime pension. From that moment until his death, Tsiolkovsky was engaged exclusively in his research, dissemination of his ideas, and implementation of projects.

In Kaluga, the main philosophical works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky were written, the philosophy of monism was formulated, articles were written about his vision of an ideal society of the future.

In Kaluga, the Tsiolkovskys had a son and two daughters. At the same time, it was here that the Tsiolkovskys had to endure the tragic death of many of their children: of the seven children of K.E. Tsiolkovsky, five died during his lifetime.

In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky met the scientists A. L. Chizhevsky and Ya. I. Perelman, who became his friends and popularizers of his ideas, and later biographers.

In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky also did not forget about science, about astronautics and aeronautics. He built a special installation, which made it possible to measure some of the aerodynamic parameters of aircraft. Since the Physico-Chemical Society did not allocate a penny for his experiments, the scientist had to use family funds to conduct research.

Tsiolkovsky built more than 100 experimental models at his own expense and tested them. After some time, the society nevertheless drew attention to the Kaluga genius and allocated him financial support - 470 rubles, for which Tsiolkovsky built a new, improved installation - the "blower".

The study of the aerodynamic properties of bodies of various shapes and possible schemes of airborne vehicles gradually led Tsiolkovsky to think about flight options in a vacuum and the conquest of space.

In 1895 his book was published "Dreams of Earth and Sky", and a year later an article was published about other worlds, intelligent beings from other planets and about the communication of earthlings with them. In the same year, 1896, Tsiolkovsky began to write his main work, "The Study of World Spaces with Reactive Devices", published in 1903. This book touched upon the problems of using rockets in space.

In 1896-1898, the scientist took part in the newspaper "Kaluga Vestnik", which published both the materials of Tsiolkovsky himself and articles about him.

The first fifteen years of the 20th century were the most difficult in the life of a scientist. In 1902 his son Ignatius committed suicide.

In 1908, during the flood of the Oka, his house was flooded, many cars, exhibits were disabled, and numerous unique calculations were lost.

On June 5, 1919, the Council of the Russian Society of Lovers of World Studies accepted K. E. Tsiolkovsky as a member, and he, as a member of the scientific society, was granted a pension. This saved him from starvation during the years of devastation, since on June 30, 1919, the Socialist Academy did not elect him as a member and thus left him without a livelihood. The Physicochemical Society also did not appreciate the significance and revolutionary nature of the models presented by Tsiolkovsky.

In 1923, his second son, Alexander, took his own life.

On November 17, 1919, five people raided the Tsiolkovskys' house. After searching the house, they took the head of the family and brought him to Moscow, where they put him in a prison on Lubyanka. There he was interrogated for several weeks. According to some reports, a certain high-ranking person interceded for Tsiolkovsky, as a result of which the scientist was released.

In 1918, Tsiolkovsky was elected to the number of competing members of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences (in 1924 it was renamed the Communist Academy), and on November 9, 1921, the scientist was awarded a life pension for services to domestic and world science. This pension was paid until September 19, 1935 - on that day Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky died of stomach cancer in his hometown of Kaluga.

Six days before his death, on September 13, 1935, K. E. Tsiolkovsky wrote in a letter to: “Before the revolution, my dream could not come true. Only October brought recognition to the works of the self-taught: only the Soviet government and the party of Lenin-Stalin provided me with effective assistance. I felt the love of the masses, and this gave me the strength to continue my work, already being sick ... I transfer all my work on aviation, rocket navigation and interplanetary communications to the Bolshevik parties and the Soviet government - the true leaders of the progress of human culture. I am sure that they will successfully complete my work..

The letter of the eminent scientist was soon answered: “To the famous scientist comrade K. E. Tsiolkovsky. Please accept my gratitude for the letter full of confidence in the Bolshevik Party and Soviet power. I wish you good health and further fruitful work for the benefit of the working people. I shake your hand. I. Stalin».

The next day, a decree of the Soviet government was published on measures to perpetuate the memory of the great Russian scientist and on the transfer of his works to the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet. Subsequently, by decision of the government, they were transferred to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where a special commission was created to develop the works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky.

The commission distributed the scientific works of the scientist into sections. The first volume concluded all the works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky on aerodynamics. The second volume - works on jet aircraft, the third volume - works on all-metal airships, on increasing the energy of heat engines and various issues of applied mechanics, on watering deserts and cooling human dwellings in them, the use of tides and waves and various inventions, in the fourth volume included works by Tsiolkovsky on astronomy, geophysics, biology, the structure of matter and other problems, and finally, the fifth volume is biographical materials and correspondence of the scientist.

In 1966, 31 years after the death of the scientist, the Orthodox priest Alexander Men performed a funeral ceremony over the grave of Tsiolkovsky.

Works by Tsiolkovsky:

1883 - “Free space. (systematic presentation of scientific ideas)"
1902-1904 - "Ethics, or the natural foundations of morality"
1903 - "Research of world spaces with jet devices"
1911 - "Research of world spaces with jet devices"
1914 - "Research of world spaces with jet devices (Supplement)"
1924 - "Spaceship"
1926 - "Research of world spaces with jet devices"
1925 - Monism of the Universe
1926 - "Friction and air resistance"
1927 - “Space rocket. Experienced Training"
1927 - "Universal alphabet, spelling and language"
1928 - "Proceedings on the Space Rocket 1903-1907"
1929 - "Space Rocket Trains"
1929 - "Jet engine"
1929 - "Aims of Astronomy"
1930 - "Stargazers"
1931 - "The origin of music and its essence"
1932 - "Jet Propulsion"
1932-1933 - "Rocket Fuel"
1933 - "Starship with its predecessor machines"
1933 - "Projectiles that acquire cosmic speeds on land or water"
1935 - "The highest rocket speed."

STAR DREAMER

The works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky on rocket dynamics and the theory of interplanetary communications were the first serious research in the world scientific and technical literature. In these studies, mathematical formulas and calculations do not obscure deep and clear ideas formulated in an original and clear way. More than half a century has passed since the publication of the first articles by Tsiolkovsky on the theory of jet propulsion. A strict and merciless judge - time - only reveals and emphasizes the grandeur of ideas, the originality of creativity and the high wisdom of penetrating into the essence of new patterns of natural phenomena that are characteristic of these works of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. His works help to carry out the new aspirations of Soviet science and technology. Our Motherland can be proud of its famous scientist, the initiator of new trends in science and industry.
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky is an outstanding Russian scientist, a researcher of great capacity for work and perseverance, a man of great talent. The breadth and richness of his creative imagination combined with logical consistency and mathematical precision of judgments. He was a true innovator in science. The most important and viable studies of Tsiolkovsky relate to the substantiation of the theory of jet propulsion. In the last quarter of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Konstantin Eduardovich created a new science that determined the laws of rocket motion, and developed the first designs for exploring the boundless world spaces with jet instruments. At that time, many scientists considered jet engines and rocket technology to be unpromising and insignificant in their practical significance, and rockets were only suitable for entertaining fireworks and illuminations.
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17, 1857 in the ancient Russian village of Izhevsky, located in the floodplain of the Oka, Spassky district, Ryazan province, in the family of a forester Eduard Ignatievich Tsiolkovsky.
Konstantin's father, Eduard Ignatievich Tsiolkovsky (1820 -1881, full name - Makar-Eduard-Erasmus), was born in the village of Korostyanin (now the Goshchansky district of the Rivne region in northwestern Ukraine). In 1841 he graduated from the Forest and Survey Institute in St. Petersburg, then served as a forester in the Olonetsk and St. Petersburg provinces. In 1843 he was transferred to the Pronskoye forestry of the Spassky district of the Ryazan province. Living in the village of Izhevsk, he met his future wife Maria Ivanovna Yumasheva (1832-1870), mother of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Having Tatar roots, she was brought up in the Russian tradition. The ancestors of Maria Ivanovna under Ivan the Terrible moved to the Pskov province. Her parents, small landed nobles, also owned a cooperage and basket workshop. Maria Ivanovna was an educated woman: she graduated from high school, knew Latin, mathematics and other sciences.

Almost immediately after the wedding in 1849, the Tsiolkovsky couple moved to the village of Izhevskoye in the Spassky district, where they lived until 1860.
About his parents, Tsiolkovsky wrote: “Father was always cold, reserved. Among his acquaintances, he was known as an intelligent person and orator. Among the officials - red and intolerant in their ideal honesty ... He had a passion for invention and construction. I was not yet in the world when he invented and arranged a threshing machine. Alas, unsuccessful! The older brothers said that he built models of houses and palaces with them. Our father encouraged all physical labor in us, as well as amateur performance in general. We almost always did everything ourselves ... Mother was of a completely different nature - a sanguine nature, fever, laughter, a mocker and gifted. In the father, character, willpower prevailed, in the mother - talent.
By the time Kostya was born, the family lived in a house on Polnaya Street (now Tsiolkovsky Street), which has survived to this day and is still privately owned.
In Izhevsk, Konstantin had a chance to live for a very short time - the first three years of his life, and he had almost no memories of this period. Eduard Ignatievich began to have troubles in the service - the authorities were dissatisfied with his liberal attitude towards local peasants.
In 1860, Konstantin's father was transferred to Ryazan as a clerk of the Forest Department, and soon began to teach natural history and taxation in the land surveying and taxation classes of the Ryazan gymnasium and received the rank of titular adviser. The family lived in Ryazan on Voznesenskaya Street for almost eight years. During this time, many events took place that influenced the rest of Konstantin Eduardovich's life.

Kostya Tsiolkovsky in childhood.
Ryazan

Mom was involved in the primary education of Kostya and his brothers. It was she who taught Konstantin to read and write, introduced him to the beginnings of arithmetic. Kostya learned to read from “Tales” by Alexander Afanasyev, and his mother taught him only the alphabet, and Kostya Tsiolkovsky guessed how to put words from letters.
The first years of Konstantin Eduardovich's childhood were happy. He was a lively, intelligent child, enterprising and impressionable. In the summer, the boy built huts with his comrades in the forest, loved to climb fences, roofs and trees. I ran a lot, played ball, rounders, gorodki. He often launched a kite and sent up the “mail” thread - a box with a cockroach. In winter, he enjoyed skating. Tsiolkovsky was about eight years old when his mother gave him a tiny balloon "balloon" (aerostat), blown out of a collodion and filled with hydrogen. The future creator of the theory of an all-metal airship enjoyed this toy. Recalling his childhood years, Tsiolkovsky wrote: “I passionately loved to read and read everything I could get my hands on… I loved to dream and even paid my younger brother to listen to my nonsense. We were small, and I wanted the houses, people, and animals to be small too. Then I dreamed of physical strength. I mentally jumped high, climbed like a cat, on poles, along ropes.
In the tenth year of his life - at the beginning of winter - Tsiolkovsky, sledding, caught a cold and fell ill with scarlet fever. The disease was severe, and as a result of its complications, the boy almost completely lost his hearing. Deafness prevented her from continuing her studies at school. “Deafness makes my biography of little interest,” Tsiolkovsky later writes, “because it deprives me of communication with people, observation and borrowing. My biography is poor in faces and collisions.” From the age of 11 to 14, Tsiolkovsky's life was “the saddest, darkest time. “I try,” writes K. E. Tsiolkovsky, “to restore it in my memory, but now I can’t remember anything anymore. There is nothing to commemorate this time.”
At this time, Kostya for the first time begins to show interest in craftsmanship. “I liked to make puppet skates, houses, sleds, clocks with weights, etc. All this was made of paper and cardboard and connected with sealing wax,” he would write later.
In 1868, the land surveying and taxation classes were closed, and Eduard Ignatievich again lost his job. The next move was to Vyatka, where there was a large Polish community and two brothers lived with the father of the family, who, probably, helped him get the post of head of the Forest Department.
Tsiolkovsky about life in Vyatka: “Vyatka is unforgettable for me ... My conscious life began there. When our family moved there from Ryazan, I thought that it was a dirty, deaf, gray town, bears walk the streets, but it turned out that this provincial city is no worse, but in some ways, its own library, for example, better than Ryazan.
In Vyatka, the Tsiolkovsky family lived in the house of the merchant Shuravin on Preobrazhenskaya Street.
In 1869, Kostya, together with his younger brother Ignatius, entered the first class of the male Vyatka gymnasium. The study was given with great difficulty, there were many subjects, the teachers were strict. Deafness was very disturbing: “I didn’t hear the teacher at all or heard only obscure sounds.”
Later, in a letter to D. I. Mendeleev on August 30, 1890, Tsiolkovsky wrote: “Once again I ask you, Dmitry Ivanovich, to take my work under your protection. The oppression of circumstances, deafness from the age of ten, the resulting ignorance of life and people, and other unfavorable conditions, I hope, will excuse my weakness in your eyes.
In the same year, 1869, sad news came from St. Petersburg - the elder brother Dmitry, who studied at the Naval School, died. This death shocked the whole family, but especially Maria Ivanovna. In 1870, Kostya's mother, whom he dearly loved, died unexpectedly.
Grief crushed the orphaned boy. Even without that he did not shine with success in his studies, oppressed by the misfortunes that fell on him, Kostya studied worse and worse. Much more acutely did he feel his deafness, which made him more and more isolated. For pranks, he was repeatedly punished, ended up in a punishment cell. In the second grade, Kostya stayed for the second year, and from the third (in 1873) an expulsion followed with the characteristic "... for admission to a technical school." After that, Konstantin Eduardovich never studied anywhere - he studied exclusively on his own.
It was at this time that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky found his true calling and place in life. He educates himself, using his father's small library, which contained books on science and mathematics. At the same time, a passion for invention awakens in him. He builds balloons out of thin tissue paper, makes a small lathe, and constructs a stroller that was supposed to move with the help of the wind. The model of the stroller was a great success and moved on the roof along the board even against the wind! “Glimpses of a serious mental consciousness,” writes Tsiolkovsky about this period of his life, “manifested while reading. So, at the age of fourteen, I took it into my head to read arithmetic, and it seemed to me that everything there was completely clear and understandable. Since that time, I realized that books are a simple thing and quite accessible to me. I began to disassemble with curiosity and understanding some of my father's books on natural and mathematical sciences ... I am fascinated by the astrolabe, measuring the distance to inaccessible objects, taking plans, determining heights. And I arrange an astrolabe - a goniometer. With its help, without leaving home, I determine the distance to the fire tower. I find 400 arshins. I go and check. It turns out that's right. From that moment on, I believed in theoretical knowledge!” Outstanding abilities, a penchant for independent work and the undoubted talent of the inventor made the parent of K. E. Tsiolkovsky think about his future profession and further education.
Believing in his son's abilities, in July 1873, Eduard Ignatievich decided to send 16-year-old Konstantin to Moscow to enter the Higher Technical School (now Bauman Moscow State Technical University), providing him with a cover letter to his friend with a request to help him get settled. However, Konstantin lost the letter and remembered only the address: Nemetskaya Street (now Baumanskaya Street). Having reached her, the young man rented a room in the laundress's apartment.
For unknown reasons, Konstantin never entered the school, but decided to continue his education on his own. One of the best connoisseurs of Tsiolkovsky's biography, engineer B. N. Vorobyov, writes about the future scientist: “Like many young men and women who flocked to the capital for education, he was full of the brightest hopes. But no one thought to pay attention to the young provincial, who was striving with all his might for the treasury of knowledge. The difficult financial situation, deafness and practical inability to live least of all contributed to the identification of his talents and abilities.
From home, Tsiolkovsky received 10-15 rubles a month. He ate only black bread, did not even have potatoes and tea. But he bought books, retorts, mercury, sulfuric acid, etc. for various experiments and home-made devices. “I remember very well,” writes Tsiolkovsky in his autobiography, “that, apart from water and black bread, I then had nothing. Every three days I went to the bakery and bought bread there for 9 kopecks. Thus, I lived on 90 kopecks a month ... Nevertheless, I was happy with my ideas, and black bread did not upset me at all.
In addition to experiments in physics and chemistry, Tsiolkovsky read a lot, studying science every day from ten in the morning until three or four in the afternoon in the Chertkovskaya public library - the only free library in Moscow at that time.
In this library, Tsiolkovsky met with the founder of Russian cosmism, Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, who worked there as an assistant librarian (an employee who was constantly in the hall), but did not recognize the famous thinker in a modest employee. “He gave me forbidden books. Then it turned out that he was a well-known ascetic, a friend of Tolstoy and an amazing philosopher and modest. He distributed all his tiny salary to the poor. Now I see that he wanted to make me his boarder, but he did not succeed: I was too shy, ”Konstantin Eduardovich later wrote in his autobiography. Tsiolkovsky admitted that Fedorov replaced his university professors. However, this influence manifested itself much later, ten years after the death of the Moscow Socrates, and during his residence in Moscow, Konstantin knew nothing about the views of Nikolai Fedorovich, and they never spoke about the Cosmos.
Work in the library was subject to a clear routine. In the morning, Konstantin was engaged in exact and natural sciences, which required concentration and clarity of mind. Then he switched to simpler material: fiction and journalism. He actively studied "thick" journals, where both review scientific articles and journalistic articles were published. He enthusiastically read Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, admired the articles of Dmitry Pisarev: “Pisarev made me tremble with joy and happiness. In him I saw then my second "I".
During the first year of his life in Moscow, Tsiolkovsky studied physics and the principles of mathematics. In 1874, the Chertkovo Library moved to the building of the Rumyantsev Museum, and Nikolai Fedorov moved to a new place of work with it. In the new reading room Konstantin studies differential and integral calculus, higher algebra, analytic and spherical geometry. Then astronomy, mechanics, chemistry.
For three years, Konstantin fully mastered the gymnasium program, as well as a significant part of the university program.
Unfortunately, his father was no longer able to pay for his accommodation in Moscow, and besides, he felt unwell and was going to retire. With the knowledge gained, Konstantin could well begin independent work in the provinces, as well as continue his education outside of Moscow. In the autumn of 1876, Eduard Ignatievich called his son back to Vyatka, and Konstantin returned home.
Konstantin returned to Vyatka weakened, emaciated and emaciated. Difficult living conditions in Moscow, hard work also led to a deterioration in vision. After returning home, Tsiolkovsky began to wear glasses. Having regained his strength, Konstantin began to give private lessons in physics and mathematics. I learned my first lesson through my father's connections in a liberal society. Having shown himself to be a talented teacher, in the future he had no shortage of students.
When teaching lessons, Tsiolkovsky used his own original methods, the main of which was a visual demonstration - Konstantin made paper models of polyhedra for geometry lessons, together with his students conducted numerous experiments in physics lessons, which earned him the fame of a teacher who explains the material well and clearly in the classroom with whom always interesting.
To make models and conduct experiments, Tsiolkovsky rented a workshop. He spent all his free time in it or in the library. I read a lot - special literature, fiction, journalism. According to his autobiography, at that time he read the magazines Sovremennik, Delo, Domestic Notes for all the years that they were published. Then he read The Beginnings by Isaac Newton, whose scientific views Tsiolkovsky adhered to for the rest of his life.
At the end of 1876, Konstantin's younger brother Ignatius died. The brothers were very close from childhood, Konstantin trusted Ignatius with his innermost thoughts, and the death of his brother was a heavy blow.
By 1877, Eduard Ignatievich was already very weak and ill, the tragic death of his wife and children had an effect (except for the sons of Dmitry and Ignatius, during these years the Tsiolkovskys lost their youngest daughter, Catherine - she died in 1875, during the absence of Konstantin), the head of the family left resign. In 1878 the entire Tsiolkovsky family returned to Ryazan.
Upon returning to Ryazan, the family lived on Sadovaya Street. Immediately after his arrival, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky underwent a medical examination and was released from military service due to deafness. The family was supposed to buy a house and live on the income from it, but the unforeseen happened - Konstantin quarreled with his father. As a result, Konstantin rented a separate room from the employee Palkin and was forced to look for other means of subsistence, since his personal savings accumulated from private lessons in Vyatka were coming to an end, and in Ryazan an unknown tutor could not find students without recommendations.
To continue working as a teacher, a certain, documented qualification was required. In the autumn of 1879, at the First Provincial Gymnasium, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky took an external exam for a county mathematics teacher. As a "self-taught", he had to pass a "complete" exam - not only the subject itself, but also grammar, catechism, worship and other compulsory disciplines. Tsiolkovsky was never interested in these subjects and did not study them, but he managed to prepare himself in a short time.

County teacher's certificate
mathematics obtained by Tsiolkovsky

Having successfully passed the exam, Tsiolkovsky received a referral from the Ministry of Education to Borovsk, located 100 kilometers from Moscow, to his first public position and in January 1880 left Ryazan.
Tsiolkovsky was appointed to the post of teacher of arithmetic and geometry in the Borovsk district school of the Kaluga province.
On the recommendation of the inhabitants of Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky "got to live with a widower with his daughter, who lived on the outskirts of the city" - E. N. Sokolov. Tsiolkovsky "was given two rooms and a table of soup and porridge." Sokolov's daughter, Varya, was the same age as Tsiolkovsky - two months younger than him. Her character, diligence pleased Konstantin Eduardovich, and he soon married her. “We went to get married for 4 miles on foot, we didn’t dress up. Nobody was allowed into the church. They returned - and no one knew anything about our marriage ... I remember that on the wedding day I bought a lathe from a neighbor and cut glass for electric machines. Nevertheless, the musicians somehow got wind of the wedding. They were forced out. Only the crowning priest got drunk. And then it was not I who treated him, but the owner.
In Borovsk, four children were born to the Tsiolkovskys: the eldest daughter Lyubov (1881) and sons Ignatius (1883), Alexander (1885) and Ivan (1888). The Tsiolkovskys lived in poverty, but, according to the scientist himself, "they did not go in patches and never went hungry." Konstantin Eduardovich spent most of his salary on books, physical and chemical devices, tools, and reagents.
During the years of living in Borovsk, the family was forced to change their place of residence several times - in the fall of 1883, they moved to Kaluga Street to the house of Baranov, a sheep farmer. From the spring of 1885 they lived in the house of Kovalev (on the same Kaluga street).
On April 23, 1887, on the day Tsiolkovsky returned from Moscow, where he made a report on a metal airship of his own design, a fire broke out in his house, in which manuscripts, models, drawings, a library, as well as all the property of the Tsiolkovskys were lost, with the exception of a sewing machine, which managed to be thrown through the window into the courtyard. It was a hard blow for Konstantin Eduardovich, he expressed his thoughts and feelings in the manuscript " Prayer"(May 15, 1887).
The next move to the house of M. I. Polukhina on Krugloya Street. On April 1, 1889, Protva overflowed, and the Tsiolkovskys' house was flooded. Records and books suffered again.

House Museum of K. E. Tsiolkovsky in Borovsk
(former home of M. I. Pomukhina)

Since the autumn of 1889, the Tsiolkovskys lived in the house of the Molchanov merchants at 4 Molchanovskaya Street.
In the Borovsky district school, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky continued to improve as a teacher: he taught arithmetic and geometry outside the box, came up with exciting problems and set amazing experiments, especially for Borovsky boys. Several times he launched with his students a huge paper balloon with a “gondola”, in which there were burning torches, to heat the air. One day, the balloon flew away, and it almost set the city on fire.

The building of the former Borovsky district school

Sometimes Tsiolkovsky had to replace other teachers and teach drawing, drawing, history, geography, and once even replace the superintendent of the school.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky
(in the second row, second from the left) in
group of teachers of the Kaluga district school.
1895

In his apartment in Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky set up a small laboratory. In his house, electric lightning flashed, thunders rumbled, bells rang, lights lit up, wheels turned and illuminations shone. “I offered those who wished to try with a spoon of invisible jam. Those tempted by the treat received an electric shock.
Visitors admired and marveled at the electric octopus, which grabbed everyone with its paws by the nose or by the fingers, and then the hair that got into its “paws” stood on end and jumped out of any part of the body.
The very first work of Tsiolkovsky was devoted to mechanics in biology. It was an article written in 1880 "Graphic depiction of sensations". In it, Tsiolkovsky developed the pessimistic theory characteristic of him at that time. "disturbed zero”, mathematically substantiated the idea of ​​the meaninglessness of human life. This theory, according to the later recognition of the scientist, was destined to play a fatal role in his life and in the life of his family. Tsiolkovsky sent this article to the Russian Thought magazine, but it was not published there and the manuscript was not returned. Konstantin switched to other topics.
In 1881, the 24-year-old Tsiolkovsky independently developed the foundations of the kinetic theory of gases. He sent the work to the St. Petersburg Physico-Chemical Society, where it received the approval of prominent members of the society, including the brilliant Russian chemist Mendeleev. However, the important discoveries made by Tsiolkovsky in a remote provincial town did not represent news for science: similar discoveries had been made somewhat earlier in Germany. For the second scientific work, named "Mechanics of the Animal Organism", Tsiolkovsky was unanimously elected a member of the physico-chemical society.
Tsiolkovsky remembered this moral support for his first scientific research with gratitude all his life.
In the preface to the second edition of his work "A simple doctrine of an airship and its construction" Konstantin Eduardovich wrote: “The content of these works is somewhat belated, that is, I made discoveries on my own that had already been made earlier by others. Nevertheless, society treated me with more attention than supported my strength. It may have forgotten me, but I have not forgotten Messrs. Borgmann, Mendeleev, Van der Fliet, Pelurushevsky, Bobylev, and especially Sechenov.” In 1883, Konstantin Eduardovich wrote a work in the form of a scientific diary. "Free space", in which he subjected to a systematic study of a number of problems of classical mechanics in space without the action of gravity and resistance forces. In this case, the main characteristics of the movement of bodies are determined only by the forces of interaction between the bodies of a given mechanical system, and the laws of conservation of the main dynamic quantities acquire special significance for quantitative conclusions: momentum, momentum, and kinetic energy. Tsiolkovsky was deeply principled in his creative searches, and his ability to independently work on scientific problems is an excellent example for all beginners. His first steps in science, made in the most difficult conditions, are the steps of a great master, revolutionary innovation, the initiator of new trends in science and technology.

“I am Russian and I think that Russians will read me first of all.
It is necessary that my writings be understood by the majority. I wish it.
Therefore, I try to avoid foreign words: especially Latin
and Greek, so alien to the Russian ear.

K. E. Tsiolkovsky

Works on aeronautics and experimental aerodynamics.
The result of Tsiolkovsky's research work was a voluminous essay "Theory and experience of the balloon". In this essay, a scientific and technical justification was given for the creation of an airship design with a metal shell. Tsiolkovsky developed drawings of general views of the airship and some important structural components.
Tsiolkovsky's airship had the following characteristic features. Firstly, it was an airship of variable volume, which made it possible to maintain a constant lifting force at different ambient temperatures and different flight altitudes. The possibility of changing the volume was structurally achieved using a special tightening system and corrugated sidewalls (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. a - scheme of the metal airship K. E. Tsiolkovsky;
b - system of block contraction of the shell

Secondly, the gas filling the airship could be heated by passing the exhaust gases of the engines through the coils. The third feature of the design was that the thin metal shell was corrugated to increase strength and stability, and the corrugation waves were located perpendicular to the axis of the airship. The choice of the geometric shape of the airship and the calculation of the strength of its thin shell were solved by Tsiolkovsky for the first time.
This project of the Tsiolkovsky Airship did not receive recognition. The official organization of tsarist Russia for aeronautics - the VII aeronautical department of the Russian Technical Society - found that the project of an all-metal airship capable of changing its volume cannot be of great practical importance and airships "will forever be a toy of the winds." Therefore, the author was denied even a subsidy for the construction of the model. Tsiolkovsky's appeals to the General Staff of the Army were also unsuccessful. The printed work (1892) of Tsiolkovsky received several sympathetic reviews, and this was the end of the matter.
Tsiolkovsky came up with the progressive idea of ​​building an all-metal airplane.
In an 1894 article "Airplane or bird-like (aviation) flying machine", published in the journal "Science and Life", a description, calculations and drawings of a monoplane with a cantilever, unbraced wing are given. In contrast to foreign inventors and designers who developed devices with flapping wings in those years, Tsiolkovsky pointed out that “imitation of a bird is technically very difficult due to the complexity of the movement of the wings and tail, and also due to the complexity of the arrangement of these organs.”
Tsiolkovsky's airplane (Fig. 2) has the shape of a "frozen soaring bird, but instead of its head, imagine two propellers rotating in opposite directions ... We will replace the muscles of the animal with explosive neutral engines. They do not require a large supply of fuel (gasoline) and do not need heavy steam engines and large water supplies. ... Instead of a tail, we will arrange a double steering wheel - from a vertical and horizontal plane. ... The double rudder, the double screw and the immobility of the wings were invented by us not for the sake of profit and economy of work, but solely for the sake of the feasibility of the design.

Rice. 2. Schematic representation of the aircraft in 1895,
made by K. E. Tsiolkovsky. The top figure gives
based on the inventor's drawings general idea
about the appearance of the aircraft

In Tsiolkovsky's all-metal airplane, the wings already have a thick profile, and the fuselage is streamlined. It is very interesting that Tsiolkovsky, for the first time in the history of the development of aircraft construction, especially emphasizes the need to improve the streamlining of an airplane in order to obtain high speeds. The constructive outlines of the Tsiolkovsky airplane were incomparably more perfect than the later designs of the Wright brothers, Santos-Dumont, Voisin and other inventors. To justify his calculations, Tsiolkovsky wrote: “When receiving these numbers, I accepted the most favorable, ideal conditions for the resistance of the hull and wings; there are no outstanding parts in my airplane, except for the wings; everything is covered by a common smooth shell, even passengers.
Tsiolkovsky well foresees the importance of gasoline (or oil) internal combustion engines. Here are his words, showing a complete understanding of the aspirations of technological progress: “However, I have theoretical grounds for believing in the possibility of building extremely light and at the same time strong gasoline or oil engines that fully satisfy the task of flying.” Konstantin Eduardovich predicted that over time a small airplane would successfully compete with a car.
The development of an all-metal cantilever monoplane with a thick curved wing is Tsiolkovsky's greatest contribution to aviation. He was the first to explore this most common airplane scheme today. But Tsiolkovsky's idea of ​​building a passenger airplane also did not receive recognition in tsarist Russia. There was no money or even moral support for further research on the airplane.
About this period of his life, the scientist wrote with bitterness: “During my experiments, I made many, many new conclusions, but new conclusions are received by scientists incredulously. These conclusions may be confirmed by a repetition of my work by some experiment, but when will that be? It is hard to work alone for many years under adverse conditions and not see any light or support from anywhere.
The scientist worked on the development of his ideas about creating an all-metal airship and a well-streamlined monoplane almost all the time from 1885 to 1898. These scientific and technical inventions prompted Tsiolkovsky to a number of important discoveries. In the field of airship building, he put forward a number of completely new provisions. In essence, speaking, he was the initiator of the theory of metal controlled balloons. His technical intuition was far ahead of the level of industrial development of the 90s of the last century.
He substantiated the expediency of his proposals with detailed calculations and diagrams. The implementation of an all-metal airship, like any big and new technical problem, affected a wide range of tasks completely undeveloped in science and technology. Of course, it was impossible for one person to solve them. After all, there were questions of aerodynamics, and questions of the stability of corrugated shells, and the problems of strength, gas impermeability, and the problems of hermetic soldering of metal sheets, etc. Now one has to be amazed at how far Tsiolkovsky managed to advance, in addition to the general idea, individual technical and scientific issues.
Konstantin Eduardovich developed a method for the so-called hydrostatic testing of airships. To determine the strength of thin shells, such as the shells of all-metal airships, he recommended filling their experimental models with water. This method is now used all over the world to test the strength and stability of thin-walled vessels and shells. Tsiolkovsky also created a device that allows you to accurately, graphically determine the shape of the section of the airship shell at a given superpressure. However, the incredibly difficult living and working conditions, the absence of a team of students and followers forced the scientist in many cases to limit himself, in essence, to only the formulation of problems.
The work of Konstantin Eduardovich on theoretical and experimental aerodynamics is undoubtedly due to the need to give an aerodynamic calculation of the flight characteristics of an airship and an airplane.
Tsiolkovsky was a real natural scientist. Observations, dreams, calculations and reflections were combined in him with experiments and modeling.
In 1890-1891 he wrote a work. An excerpt from this manuscript, published with the assistance of the famous physicist Professor of Moscow University A. G. Stoletov in the proceedings of the Society of Natural Science Lovers in 1891, was the first published work of Tsiolkovsky. He was full of ideas, very active and energetic, although outwardly he seemed calm and balanced. Above average height, with long black hair and black, slightly sad eyes, he was awkward and shy in society. He had few friends. In Borovsk, Konstantin Eduardovich became close friends with his school colleague E. S. Eremeev, in Kaluga he was helped a lot by V. I. Assonov, P. P. Canning and S. V. Shcherbakov. However, in defending his ideas, he was resolute and persistent, taking little into account the gossip of his colleagues and the townsfolk.
…Winter. The astonished residents of Borovsk see how the teacher of the county school Tsiolkovsky is rushing on skates along the frozen river. He took advantage of the strong wind and, having opened his umbrella, rolls at the speed of a courier train, drawn by the force of the wind. “I was always up to something. I decided to make a sled with a wheel so that everyone would sit and swing the levers. The sleigh was supposed to race on the ice... Then I replaced this structure with a special sailing chair. Peasants traveled along the river. The horses were frightened by the rushing sail, the passers-by cursed. But, due to my deafness, I didn’t think about it for a long time. Then, seeing the horse, he hastily removed the sail in advance.
Almost all school colleagues and representatives of the local intelligentsia considered Tsiolkovsky an incorrigible dreamer and utopian. More evil people called him an amateur and a handicraftsman. The ideas of Tsiolkovsky seemed incredible to the townsfolk. “He thinks that the iron ball will rise into the air and fly. Here's a freak!" The scientist was always busy, always working. If he did not read or write, then he worked on a lathe, soldered, planed, made many working models for his students. “I made a huge balloon… out of paper. I couldn't get alcohol. Therefore, at the bottom of the ball he adapted a grid of thin wire, on which he laid several burning splinters. The ball, which sometimes had a bizarre shape, rose up as far as the thread tied to it allowed. Once the thread burned out, and my ball rushed off to the city, dropping sparks and a burning torch! Got on the roof of a shoemaker. The shoemaker arrested the ball.
The townsfolk looked at all the experiments of Tsiolkovsky as curiosities and pampering, many, without thinking, considered him an eccentric and "a little touched." Amazing energy and perseverance were needed, the greatest faith in the path of technological progress, in order to work, invent, calculate every day in such an environment and in difficult, almost beggarly conditions, moving forward and forward.
On January 27, 1892, the director of public schools, D.S. Unkovsky, turned to the trustee of the Moscow educational district with a request to transfer "one of the most capable and diligent teachers" to the district school of the city of Kaluga. At this time, Tsiolkovsky continued his work on aerodynamics and the theory of vortices in various media, and was also awaiting the publication of a book. "Metal controlled balloon" in the Moscow printing house. The decision to transfer was made on February 4th. In addition to Tsiolkovsky, teachers moved from Borovsk to Kaluga: S. I. Chertkov, E. S. Eremeev, I. A. Kazansky, doctor V. N. Ergolsky.
From the memoirs of Lyubov Konstantinovna, the daughter of a scientist: “It got dark when we entered Kaluga. After the deserted road it was pleasant to look at the flickering lights and people. The city seemed huge to us ... In Kaluga there were many cobbled streets, tall houses and the ringing of many bells flowed. There were 40 churches with monasteries in Kaluga. There were 50 thousand inhabitants.
Tsiolkovsky lived in Kaluga for the rest of his life. Since 1892 he worked as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry in the Kaluga district school. Since 1899, he taught physics at the diocesan women's school, disbanded after the October Revolution. In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky wrote his main works on astronautics, jet propulsion theory, space biology and medicine. He also continued work on the theory of a metal airship.
After completing his teaching, in 1921, Tsiolkovsky was granted a personal lifetime pension. From that moment until his death, Tsiolkovsky was engaged exclusively in his research, dissemination of his ideas, and implementation of projects.
In Kaluga, the main philosophical works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky were written, the philosophy of monism was formulated, articles were written about his vision of an ideal society of the future.
In Kaluga, the Tsiolkovskys had a son and two daughters. At the same time, it was here that the Tsiolkovskys had to endure the tragic death of many of their children: of the seven children of K.E. Tsiolkovsky, five died during his lifetime.
In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky met the scientists A. L. Chizhevsky and Ya. I. Perelman, who became his friends and popularizers of his ideas, and later biographers.
The Tsiolkovsky family arrived in Kaluga on February 4, settled in an apartment in the house of N. I. Timashova on Georgievskaya Street, rented in advance for them by E. S. Eremeev. Konstantin Eduardovich began to teach arithmetic and geometry at the Kaluga district school.
Soon after his arrival, Tsiolkovsky met Vasily Assonov, a tax inspector, an educated, progressive, versatile person, fond of mathematics, mechanics and painting. After reading the first part of Tsiolkovsky's book Controlled Metal Balloon, Assonov used his influence to organize a subscription to the second part of this work. This made it possible to collect the missing funds for its publication.

Vasily Ivanovich Assonov

On August 8, 1892, the Tsiolkovskys had a son, Leonty, who died of whooping cough exactly one year later, on the first day of his birth. At that time, there were holidays at the school, and Tsiolkovsky spent the whole summer in the Sokolniki estate of the Maloyaroslavets district with his old friend D. Ya. Kurnosov (leader of the Borovsk nobility), where he gave lessons to his children. After the death of the child, Varvara Evgrafovna decided to change her apartment, and by the time Konstantin Eduardovich returned, the family moved to the Speransky house, located opposite, on the same street.
Assonov introduced Tsiolkovsky to the chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod circle of lovers of physics and astronomy, S. V. Shcherbakov. In the 6th edition of the collection of the circle, an article by Tsiolkovsky was published "Gravity as the main source of world energy"(1893), developing the ideas of early work "Duration radiation from the sun"(1883). The work of the circle was regularly published in the recently created journal "Science and Life", and in the same year the text of this report was placed in it, as well as a small article by Tsiolkovsky "Is a metal balloon possible". December 13, 1893 Konstantin Eduardovich was elected an honorary member of the circle.
In February 1894, Tsiolkovsky wrote a work "Airplane or bird-like (aviation) machine", continuing the topic started in the article "On the Question of Flying with Wings"(1891). In it, among other things, Tsiolkovsky gave a diagram of the aerodynamic balances he designed. The current model of the "turntable" was demonstrated by N. E. Zhukovsky in Moscow, at the Mechanical Exhibition held in January of this year.
Around the same time, Tsiolkovsky became friends with the Goncharov family. Alexander Nikolaevich Goncharov, appraiser of the Kaluga Bank, nephew of the famous writer I. A. Goncharov, was a comprehensively educated person, knew several languages, corresponded with many prominent writers and public figures, he himself regularly published his works of art, devoted mainly to the theme of decline and degeneration Russian nobility. Goncharov decided to support the publication of a new book by Tsiolkovsky - a collection of essays "Dreams of Earth and Sky"(1894), his second work of fiction, while Goncharov's wife, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna, translated the article "An iron controlled balloon for 200 people, as long as a large sea steamer" into French and German and sent them to foreign journals. However, when Konstantin Eduardovich wanted to thank Goncharov and, without his knowledge, placed the inscription on the cover of the book Edition by A. N. Goncharov, this led to a scandal and a break in relations between the Tsiolkovskys and the Goncharovs.
On September 30, 1894, the Tsiolkovskys had a daughter, Maria.
In Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky also did not forget about science, about astronautics and aeronautics. He built a special installation, which made it possible to measure some of the aerodynamic parameters of aircraft. Since the Physico-Chemical Society did not allocate a penny for his experiments, the scientist had to use family funds to conduct research. By the way, Tsiolkovsky built more than 100 experimental models at his own expense and tested them. After some time, the society nevertheless drew attention to the Kaluga genius and allocated him financial support - 470 rubles, for which Tsiolkovsky built a new, improved installation - the "blower".
The study of the aerodynamic properties of bodies of various shapes and possible schemes of airborne vehicles gradually led Tsiolkovsky to think about flight options in a vacuum and the conquest of space. In 1895 his book was published "Dreams of Earth and Sky", and a year later an article was published about other worlds, intelligent beings from other planets and about the communication of earthlings with them. In the same year, 1896, Tsiolkovsky began writing his main work, published in 1903. This book touched upon the problems of using rockets in space.
In 1896-1898, the scientist took part in the newspaper "Kaluga Vestnik", which published both the materials of Tsiolokovsky himself and articles about him.

In this house K. E. Tsiolkovsky lived
almost 30 years (from 1903 to 1933).
On the first anniversary of death
K. E. Tsiolkovsky in it was discovered
scientific memorial museum

The first fifteen years of the 20th century were the most difficult in the life of a scientist. In 1902 his son Ignatius committed suicide. In 1908, during the flood of the Oka, his house was flooded, many cars, exhibits were disabled, and numerous unique calculations were lost. On June 5, 1919, the Council of the Russian Society of Lovers of World Studies accepted K. E. Tsiolkovsky as a member, and he, as a member of the scientific society, was granted a pension. This saved him from starvation during the years of devastation, since on June 30, 1919, the Socialist Academy did not elect him as a member and thus left him without a livelihood. The Physicochemical Society also did not appreciate the significance and revolutionary nature of the models presented by Tsiolkovsky. In 1923, his second son, Alexander, took his own life.
On November 17, 1919, five people raided the Tsiolkovskys' house. After searching the house, they took the head of the family and brought him to Moscow, where they put him in a prison on Lubyanka. There he was interrogated for several weeks. According to some reports, a certain high-ranking person interceded for Tsiolkovsky, as a result of which the scientist was released.

Tsiolkovsky in the office
on the bookshelf

Only in 1923, after the publication of the German physicist Hermann Oberth about space flights and rocket engines, did the Soviet authorities remember the scientist. After that, the living and working conditions of Tsiolkovsky changed radically. The party leadership of the country drew attention to him. He was assigned a personal pension and provided the opportunity for fruitful activity. The developments of Tsiolkovsky became of interest to some ideologists of the new government.
In 1918, Tsiolkovsky was elected to the number of competing members of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences (in 1924 it was renamed the Communist Academy), and on November 9, 1921, the scientist was awarded a life pension for services to domestic and world science. This pension was paid until September 19, 1935 - on that day Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky died in his hometown of Kaluga.
In 1932, a correspondence was established between Konstantin Eduardovich and one of the most talented "poets of Thought", of his time, who was looking for the harmony of the universe - Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky. The latter, in particular, wrote to Tsiolkovsky: “...Your thoughts about the future of the Earth, humanity, animals and plants deeply excite me, and they are very close to me. In my unpublished poems and poems, I did my best to resolve them. Zabolotsky told him about the hardships of his own search for the benefit of mankind: “It is one thing to know, and another to feel. A conservative feeling, brought up in us over the centuries, clings to our consciousness and prevents it from moving forward. The natural-philosophical research of Tsiolkovsky left an extremely significant imprint on the work of this author.
Among the great technical and scientific achievements of the 20th century, one of the first places undoubtedly belongs to rockets and the theory of jet propulsion. The years of the Second World War (1941-1945) led to an unusually rapid improvement in the design of jet vehicles. Gunpowder rockets reappeared on the battlefields, but already on more high-calorie smokeless TNT - pyroxylin gunpowder ("Katyusha"). Jet-powered aircraft, unmanned aircraft with pulsed air-jet engines (V-1) and ballistic missiles with a range of up to 300 km (V-2) were created.
Rocket technology is now becoming a very important and rapidly growing branch of industry. The development of the theory of flight of jet vehicles is one of the pressing problems of modern scientific and technological development.
K. E. Tsiolkovsky did a lot to understand the fundamentals of the theory of rocket motion. He was the first in the history of science to formulate and investigate the problem of studying rectilinear motions of rockets based on the laws of theoretical mechanics.

Rice. 3. The simplest scheme of liquid
jet engine

The simplest liquid-fueled jet engine (Fig. 3) is a pot-shaped chamber in which rural people store milk. Through nozzles located on the bottom of this pot, liquid fuel and oxidizer are supplied to the combustion chamber. The supply of fuel components is calculated in such a way as to ensure complete combustion. The fuel is ignited in the combustion chamber (Fig. 3), and the combustion products - hot gases - are ejected at high speed through a specially profiled nozzle. The oxidizer and fuel are placed in special tanks located on a rocket or aircraft. To supply the oxidizer and fuel to the combustion chamber, turbopumps are used or they are squeezed out by a compressed neutral gas (for example, nitrogen). On fig. 4 shows a photograph of the jet engine of the German V-2 rocket.

Rice. 4. Liquid-propellant rocket engine of the German V-2 rocket,
mounted in the tail of the rocket:
1 - air steering wheel; 2- combustion chamber; 3 - pipeline for
fuel supply (alcohol); 4- turbopump unit;
5- tank for oxidizer; 6-exit section of the nozzle;
7 - gas rudders

A jet of hot gases ejected from the nozzle of a jet engine creates a reactive force acting on the rocket in the direction opposite to the speed of the particles of the jet. The magnitude of the reactive force is equal to the product of the mass of gases thrown off in one second by the relative speed. If the speed is measured in meters per second, and the mass per second flow through the weight of particles in kilograms divided by the acceleration of gravity, then the reactive force will be obtained in kilograms.
In some cases, in order to burn fuel in the chamber of a jet engine, it is necessary to take air from the atmosphere. Then, during the movement of the jet apparatus, air particles are attached and heated gases are ejected. We get the so-called air-jet engine. The simplest example of a jet engine would be an ordinary tube, open at both ends, inside which a fan is placed. If you make the fan work, it will suck in air from one end of the tube and throw it out through the other end. If gasoline is injected into the tube, into the space behind the fan, and set on fire, the velocity of the hot gases leaving the tube will be much greater than the incoming ones, and the tube will receive thrust in the direction opposite to the jet of gases ejected from it. By making the cross section of the tube (tube radius) variable, it is possible, by appropriate selection of these sections along the length of the tube, to achieve very high outflow velocities of the ejected gases. In order not to carry an engine with you to rotate the fan, you can make a jet of gases flowing through the tube rotate it with the desired number of revolutions. Some difficulties will arise only when starting such an engine. The simplest scheme of an air-jet engine was proposed back in 1887 by the Russian engineer Geshwend. The idea of ​​using an air-jet engine for modern types of aircraft was independently developed by K. E. Tsiolkovsky with great care. He gave the world's first calculations for an aircraft with an air-jet engine and a turbo-compressor propeller engine. On fig. Figure 5 shows a diagram of a ramjet engine, in which the movement of air particles along the axis of the pipe is created due to the initial speed received by the rocket from some other engine, and further movement is supported by the reactive force due to the increased speed of particle ejection compared to the speed incoming particles.

Rice. 5. Scheme of direct-flow air-
jet engine

The energy of movement of an air jet engine is obtained by burning fuel, just like in a simple rocket. Thus, the source of motion of any jet apparatus is the energy stored in this apparatus, which can be converted into mechanical motion of particles of matter ejected from the apparatus at high speed. As soon as the ejection of such particles from the apparatus is created, it receives a movement in the direction opposite to the jet of erupting particles.
An appropriately directed jet of ejected particles is the main thing in the designs of all jet vehicles. Methods for obtaining powerful streams of erupting particles are very diverse. The problem of obtaining flows of discarded particles in the simplest and most economical way, the development of methods for regulating such flows is an important task for inventors and designers.
If we consider the movement of the simplest rocket, it is easy to understand that its weight changes, as part of the mass of the rocket burns out and is discarded over time. The rocket is a body of variable mass. The theory of motion of bodies of variable mass was created at the end of the 19th century in Russia by I. V. Meshchersky and K. E. Tsiolkovsky.
The wonderful works of Meshchersky and Tsiolkovsky perfectly complement each other. The study of rectilinear motions of rockets, carried out by Tsiolkovsky, significantly enriched the theory of the motion of bodies of variable mass, thanks to the formulation of completely new problems. Unfortunately, Meshchersky's work was not known to Tsiolkovsky, and in a number of cases he repeated Meshchersky's earlier results in his work.
The study of the movement of jet vehicles presents great difficulties, since during the movement the weight of any jet vehicle changes significantly. Already now there are rockets, in which the weight decreases by 8-10 times during the operation of the engine. The change in the weight of the rocket in the process of movement does not allow using directly those formulas and conclusions that are obtained in classical mechanics, which is the theoretical basis for calculating the movement of bodies whose weight is constant during movement.
It is also known that in those tasks of technology where it was necessary to deal with the movement of bodies of variable weight (for example, in aircraft with large reserves of fuel), it was always assumed that the trajectory of movement can be divided into sections and the weight of the moving body can be considered constant in each individual section. In this way, the difficult problem of studying the motion of a body of variable mass was replaced by a simpler and already studied problem of the motion of a body of constant mass. The study of the motion of rockets as bodies of variable mass was put on firm scientific ground by K. E. Tsiolkovsky. We now call the theory of rocket flight rocket dynamics. Tsiolkovsky is the founder of modern rocket dynamics. The published works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky on rocket dynamics make it possible to establish the consistent development of his ideas in this new field of human knowledge. What are the basic laws governing the movement of bodies of variable mass? How to calculate the flight speed of a jet? How to find the altitude of a rocket fired vertically? How to get out of the atmosphere on a jet device - to break through the "shell" of the atmosphere? How to overcome the gravity of the earth - to break through the "shell" of gravity? Here are some of the issues considered and resolved by Tsiolkovsky.
From our point of view, the most precious idea of ​​Tsiolkovsky in the theory of rockets is the addition to Newton's classical mechanics of a new section - the mechanics of bodies of variable mass. To make a new large group of phenomena subject to the human mind, to explain what many saw but did not understand, to give humanity a powerful new tool for technical transformation - these are the tasks that the brilliant Tsiolkovsky set himself. All the talent of the researcher, all the originality, creative originality and extraordinary flight of fantasy with particular force and productivity came to light in his work on jet propulsion. He predicted the development of jet vehicles for decades to come. He considered the changes that an ordinary firework rocket had to undergo in order to become a powerful tool for technological progress in a new field of human knowledge.
In one of his works (1911), Tsiolkovsky expressed a deep thought about the simplest applications of rockets, which were known to people for a very long time: “We usually observe such miserable jet phenomena on earth. That is why they could not encourage anyone to dream and explore. Only reason and science could indicate the transformation of these phenomena into grandiose, almost incomprehensible feelings.

Tsiolkovsky at work

When a rocket flies at relatively low altitudes, three main forces will act on it: gravity (Newtonian gravity), aerodynamic force due to the presence of the atmosphere (usually this force is decomposed into two: lifting and drag), and reactive force due to the process of rejection particles from the nozzle of a jet engine. If we take into account all these forces, then the task of studying the motion of a rocket turns out to be quite complicated. It is therefore natural to begin the theory of rocket flight from the simplest cases, when some of the forces can be neglected. Tsiolkovsky in his work of 1903, first of all, explored what possibilities the reactive principle of creating mechanical motion contains, without taking into account the action of aerodynamic force and gravity. Such a case of rocket movement can be during interstellar flights, when the forces of attraction of the planets of the solar system and stars can be neglected (the rocket is far enough from both the solar system and the stars - in "free space" in Tsiolkovsky's terminology). This problem is now called the first Tsiolkovsky problem. The movement of the rocket in this case is due only to the reactive force. In the mathematical formulation of the problem, Tsiolkovsky introduces the assumption that the relative ejection velocity of particles is constant. When flying in a vacuum, this assumption means that the jet engine operates in a steady state and the velocity of outflowing particles in the exit section of the nozzle does not depend on the law of rocket motion.
Here is how Konstantin Eduardovich substantiates this hypothesis in his work "The study of world spaces by jet devices": “In order for the projectile to receive the highest speed, it is necessary that each particle of combustion products or other waste receive the highest relative speed. It is also constant for certain waste substances. …Energy saving should not take place here: it is impossible and unprofitable. In other words: the basis of the rocket theory must be the constant relative velocity of the debris particles.
Tsiolkovsky composes and studies in detail the equation of motion of a rocket at a constant speed of debris particles and obtains a very important mathematical result, now known as the Tsiolkovsky formula.
From the Tsiolkovsky formula for maximum speed it follows that:
a). The speed of the rocket at the end of the engine operation (at the end of the active phase of the flight) will be the greater, the greater the relative velocity of the ejected particles. If the relative velocity of the outflow doubles, then the velocity of the rocket also doubles.
b). The speed of the rocket at the end of the active section increases if the ratio of the initial mass (weight) of the rocket to the mass (weight) of the rocket at the end of combustion increases. However, here the dependence is more complicated, it is given by the following Tsiolkovsky theorem:
"When the mass of the rocket, plus the mass of the explosives contained in the reactive apparatus, increases exponentially, then the speed of the rocket increases in an arithmetic progression." This law can be expressed in two series of numbers.
“Suppose, for example,” writes Tsiolkovsky, “that the mass of the rocket and explosives is 8 units. I drop four units and get the speed, which we will take as one. Then I discard two units of explosive material and gain another unit of speed; finally, I discard the last unit of mass of explosives and get another unit of speed; only 3 units of speed. From the theorem and Tsiolkovsky's explanations, it is clear that "the speed of a rocket is far from being proportional to the mass of the explosive material: it grows very slowly, but without limit."
A very important practical result follows from the Tsiolkovsky formula: in order to obtain the highest possible rocket speeds at the end of engine operation, it is necessary to increase the relative velocities of the ejected particles and increase the relative fuel supply.
It should be noted that an increase in the relative velocities of the outflow of particles requires the improvement of a jet engine and a reasonable choice of constituent parts (components) of the fuels used. The second way, associated with an increase in the relative fuel supply, requires a significant improvement (lightening) of the design of the rocket body, auxiliary mechanisms and flight control devices.
A rigorous mathematical analysis carried out by Tsiolkovsky revealed the basic patterns of rocket movement and made it possible to quantify the perfection of real rocket designs.
A simple Tsiolkovsky formula allows us to establish the feasibility of one or another task by elementary calculations.
The Tsiolkovsky formula can be used for approximate estimates of the rocket speed in cases where the aerodynamic force and gravity are relatively small in relation to the reactive force. Problems of this kind arise for powder rockets with short burning times and high flow rates per second. The reactive force of such powder rockets exceeds the force of gravity by 40-120 times and the drag force by 20-60 times. The maximum speed of such a powder rocket, calculated according to the Tsiolkovsky formula, will differ from the true one by 1-4%; such accuracy in determining flight characteristics at the initial stages of design is quite sufficient.
The Tsiolkovsky formula made it possible to quantify the maximum possibilities of the reactive method of communicating movement. After the work of Tsiolkovsky in 1903, a new era in the development of rocket technology began. This era is marked by the fact that the flight characteristics of rockets can be determined in advance by calculations, therefore, the creation of the scientific design of rockets begins with the work of Tsiolkovsky. The prediction of K. I. Konstantinov, the designer of powder rockets of the 19th century, about the possibility of creating a new science - rocket ballistics (or rocket dynamics) - received real implementation in the works of Tsiolkovsky.
At the end of the 19th century, Tsiolkovsky revived scientific and technical research on rocket technology in Russia and later proposed a large number of original rocket design schemes. An essentially new step in the development of rocket technology was the schemes developed by Tsiolkovsky for long-range rockets and rockets for interplanetary travel with liquid-fueled jet engines. Before the work of Tsiolkovsky, rockets with powder jet engines were investigated and proposed for solving various problems.
The use of liquid fuel (fuel and oxidizer) makes it possible to give a very rational design of a liquid-propellant jet engine with thin walls cooled by fuel (or oxidizer), easy and reliable in operation. For large missiles, this solution was the only acceptable one.
Rocket 1903. The first type of long-range missile was described by Tsiolkovsky in his work "The study of world spaces by jet devices" published in 1903. The rocket is an elongated metal chamber, very similar in shape to an airship or a large spindle. “Let's imagine,” writes Tsiolkovsky, “such a projectile: an oblong metal chamber (of the least resistance form), supplied with light, oxygen, absorbers of carbon dioxide, miasma and other animal secretions, intended not only for storing various physical devices, but also for humans, controlling the chamber ... The chamber has a large supply of substances, which, when mixed, immediately form an explosive mass. These substances, exploding correctly and evenly in a certain place, flow in the form of hot gases through pipes expanding towards the end like a horn or a wind musical instrument ... At one narrow end of the pipe, explosives are mixed: here condensed and fiery gases are obtained. At its other extended end, they, having become very rarefied and cooled from this, break out through the funnels with an enormous relative speed.
On fig. 6 shows the volumes occupied by liquid hydrogen (fuel) and liquid oxygen (oxidizer). The place of their mixing (combustion chamber) is indicated in fig. 6 with the letter A. The walls of the nozzle are surrounded by a casing with a cooling liquid rapidly circulating in it (one of the fuel components).

Rice. 6. Rocket by K. E. Tsiolkovsky - project of 1903
(with straight nozzle). Drawing by K. E. Tsiolkovsky

To control the flight of a rocket in the upper rarefied layers of the atmosphere, Tsiolkovsky recommended two methods: graphite rudders placed in a jet of gases near the exit of the jet engine nozzle, or turning the end of the bell (turning the engine nozzle). Both techniques make it possible to deflect the direction of the jet of hot gases from the axis of the rocket and create a force perpendicular to the direction of flight (control force). It should be noted that these proposals of Tsiolkovsky have found wide application and development in modern rocket technology. All liquid-propellant jet engines known to us from the foreign press are designed with forced cooling of the chamber walls and nozzle by one of the propellant components. Such cooling makes it possible to make the walls sufficiently thin and withstand high temperatures (up to 3500-4000°C) for several minutes. Without cooling, such chambers burn out in 2-3 seconds.
The gas rudders proposed by Tsiolkovsky are used to control the flight of missiles of various classes abroad. If the reactive force developed by the engine exceeds the rocket's gravity by 1.5-3 times, then in the first seconds of the flight, when the rocket's speed is low, the air rudders will be ineffective even in dense layers of the atmosphere and the correct flight of the rocket is ensured with the help of gas rudders. Usually, four graphite rudders are placed in the jet of a jet engine, located in two mutually perpendicular planes. The deviation of one pair allows you to change the direction of flight in the vertical plane, and the deviation of the second pair changes the direction of flight in the horizontal plane. Consequently, the action of gas rudders is similar to the action of the elevators and rudders of an airplane or glider, changing the pitch and heading angle during flight. To prevent the rocket from rotating around its own axis, one pair of gas rudders can deviate in different directions; in this case, their action is similar to the action of the ailerons of an aircraft.
Gas rudders placed in a jet of hot gases reduce the reactive force, therefore, with a relatively long operating time of the jet engine (more than 2-3 minutes), it sometimes turns out to be more profitable either to turn the entire engine automatically, or to put additional (smaller size) turning engines on the rocket , which serve to control the flight of the rocket.
Rocket 1914. The external outlines of the rocket of 1914 are close to the outlines of the rocket of 1903, but the device of the explosive tube (i.e. nozzle) of the jet engine is complicated. Tsiolkovsky recommends using hydrocarbons as a fuel (for example, kerosene, gasoline). Here is how the device of this rocket is described (Fig. 7): “The left rear aft part of the rocket consists of two chambers separated by a partition not indicated on the drawing. The first chamber contains liquid, freely evaporating oxygen. It has a very low temperature and surrounds the blast tube part and other high temperature parts. The other compartment contains liquid hydrocarbons. The two black dots at the bottom (almost in the middle) indicate the cross section of the pipes that deliver explosive materials to the blast pipe. From the mouth of the explosive pipe (see circle of two points) two branches depart with rapidly rushing gases, which entrain and push the liquid elements of the explosion into the mouth, like a Giffard injector or a steam-jet pump. “... The explosive tube makes several turns along the rocket parallel to its longitudinal axis and then several turns perpendicular to this axis. The goal is to reduce the rocket's agility or make it easier to control."

Rice. 7. Rocket by K. E. Tsiolkovsky - project of 1914
(with curved nozzle). Drawing by K. E. Tsiolkovsky

In this rocket scheme, the outer shell of the body can be cooled with liquid oxygen. Tsiolkovsky well understood the difficulty of returning a rocket from outer space to earth, meaning that at high flight speeds in dense layers of the atmosphere, a rocket could burn out or collapse like a meteorite.
In the nose of the rocket, Tsiolkovsky has: a supply of gases necessary for breathing and maintaining the normal life of passengers; devices for saving living beings from large overloads that occur during accelerated (or slow) rocket movement; flight control devices; food and water supplies; substances that absorb carbon dioxide, miasms and, in general, all harmful products of breathing.
Very interesting is Tsiolkovsky's idea of ​​protecting living beings and humans from large overloads ("increased gravity" - in Tsiolkovsky's terminology) by immersing them in a liquid of equal density. For the first time this idea is found in the work of Tsiolkovsky in 1891. Here is a brief description of a simple experiment that convinces us of the correctness of Tsiolkovsky's proposal for homogeneous bodies (bodies of the same density). Take a delicate wax figure that can barely support its own weight. Let us pour a liquid of the same density as the wax into a strong vessel, and immerse the figure in this liquid. Now, by means of a centrifugal machine, we will cause overloads that exceed the force of gravity many times over. The vessel, if not strong enough, may collapse, but the wax figure in the liquid will remain intact. “Nature has long used this technique,” ​​writes Tsiolkovsky, “by immersing the embryo of animals, their brains and other weak parts in a liquid. So it protects them from any damage. Man has so far made little use of this idea.
It should be noted that for bodies whose density is different (heterogeneous bodies), the effect of overload will still manifest itself when the body is immersed in a liquid. So, if lead pellets are embedded in a wax figure, then with large overloads, all of them will crawl out of the wax figure into the liquid. But, apparently, there is no doubt that in a liquid a person will be able to withstand greater overloads than, for example, in a special chair.
Rocket 1915. Perelman's book "Interplanetary Travel", published in 1915 in Petrograd, contains a drawing and description of the rocket, made by Tsiolkovsky.
“Pipe A and chamber B made of strong refractory metal are coated inside with an even more refractory material, such as tungsten. C and D - pumps pumping liquid oxygen and hydrogen into the blasting chamber. The rocket also has a second refractory outer shell. Between both shells there is a gap into which evaporating liquid oxygen rushes in the form of a very cold gas, it prevents excessive heating of both shells from friction during the rapid movement of the rocket in the atmosphere. Liquid oxygen and the same hydrogen are separated from each other by an impenetrable shell (not shown in Fig. 8). E - a pipe that discharges evaporated cold oxygen into the gap between the two shells, it flows out through hole K. At the pipe hole there is (not shown in Fig. 8) a steering wheel of two mutually perpendicular planes for controlling the rocket. The escaping rarefied and cooled gases, thanks to these rudders, change the direction of their movement and, thus, turn the rocket.

Rice. 8. Rocket by K. E. Tsiolkovsky - project of 1915.
Drawing by K. E. Tsiolkovsky

Composite rockets. In the works of Tsiolkovsky, devoted to composite rockets, or rocket trains, there are no drawings with general types of structures, but according to the descriptions given in the works, it can be argued that Tsiolkovsky proposed two types of rocket trains for implementation. The first type of train is similar to a railway one, when the locomotive pushes the train from behind. Imagine four rockets linked in series with one another (Fig. 9). Such a train is pushed first by the lower - tail rocket (the first stage engine is running). After using up its fuel reserves, the rocket unhooks and falls to the ground. Then the engine of the second rocket starts to work, which is the tail pusher for the train of the remaining three rockets. After the fuel of the second rocket is completely used up, it also unhooks, and so on. The last, fourth, rocket begins to use its fuel supply, already having a sufficiently high speed obtained from the operation of the engines of the first three stages.

Rice. 9. Scheme of a four-stage
rockets (trains) by K. E. Tsiolkovsky

Tsiolkovsky proved by calculations the most advantageous distribution of the weights of the individual rockets included in the train.
The second type of composite rocket, proposed by Tsiolkovsky in 1935, he called the missile squadron. Imagine that 8 rockets set off in a flight, fastened in parallel, as the logs of a raft are fastened on a river. At launch, all eight jet engines start working simultaneously. When each of the eight missiles has used up half of its fuel supply, then 4 missiles (for example, two on the right and two on the left) will pour their unused fuel supply into the half-empty tanks of the remaining 4 missiles and separate from the squadron. Further flight is continued by 4 missiles with fully filled tanks. When the remaining 4 missiles have each used up half of the available fuel supply, then 2 missiles (one on the right and one on the left) will pour their fuel into the remaining two missiles and separate from the squadron. The flight will continue 2 missiles. Having used up half of its fuel, one of the squadron's rockets will pour the remaining half into a rocket designed to reach the destination of the journey. The advantage of a squadron is that all missiles are the same. The transfusion of fuel components in flight is, although difficult, but quite technically solvable.
Creating a reasonable design of a rocket train is one of the most pressing problems at the present time.

Tsiolkovsky at work in the garden.
Kaluga, 1932

In the last years of his life, K. E. Tsiolkovsky worked hard on the creation of a theory of the flight of jet aircraft in his article "Jet Airplane"(1930) details the advantages and disadvantages of a jet aircraft compared to an aircraft equipped with a propeller. Pointing to the high fuel consumption per second in jet engines as one of the most significant shortcomings, Tsiolkovsky writes: “... Our jet airplane is five times more unprofitable than usual. But here it flies twice as fast where the density of the atmosphere is 4 times less. Here it will be unprofitable only 2.5 times. Even higher, where the air is 25 times rarer, it flies five times faster and already uses energy as successfully as a propeller-driven aircraft. At an altitude where the environment is 100 times rarer, its speed is 10 times greater and it will be 2 times more profitable than an ordinary airplane.

Tsiolkovsky at dinner with his family.
Kaluga, 1932

Tsiolkovsky ends this article with wonderful words showing a deep understanding of the laws of technology. "The era of propeller-driven airplanes must be followed by the era of jet airplanes, or airplanes of the stratosphere." It should be noted that these lines were written 10 years before the first jet aircraft built in the Soviet Union took off.
Articles "Rocketplane" and "Semi-jet stratoplane" Tsiolkovsky gives a theory of the motion of an aircraft with a liquid-propellant jet engine and develops in detail the idea of ​​a turbocompressor propeller jet aircraft.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky with his grandchildren

Tsiolkovsky died on September 19, 1935. The scientist was buried in one of his favorite places of rest - the city park. On November 24, 1936, an obelisk was opened over the burial place (authors - architect B.N. Dmitriev, sculptors I.M. Biryukov and M.A. Muratov).

Monument to K. E. Tsiolkovsky, near the obelisk
"Conquerors of Space" in Moscow

Monument to K. E. Tsiolkovsky in Borovsk
(sculptor S. Bychkov)

In 1966, 31 years after the death of the scientist, the Orthodox priest Alexander Men performed a funeral ceremony over the grave of Tsiolkovsky.

K. E. Tsiolkovsky

Literature:

1. K. E. Tsiolkovsky and problems of the development of science and technology [Text] / ed.
2. Kiselev, A. N. Conquerors of space [Text] / A. N. Kiselev, M. F. Rebrov. - M.: Military publishing house of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, 1971. - 366, p.: ill.
3. Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky [Electronic resource] - Access mode: http://ru.wikipedia.org
4. Cosmonautics [Text]: encyclopedia / ch. ed. V. P. Glushko. - M., 1985.
5. Cosmonautics of the USSR [Text]: Sat. / comp. L. N. Gilberg, A. A. Eremenko; ch. ed. Yu.A. Mozzhorin. - M., 1986.
6. Space. Stars and planets. Space flights. Jet planes. Television [Text]: encyclopedia of a young scientist. - M.: ROSMEN, 2000. - 133 p.: ill.
7. Mussky, S. A. 100 great wonders of technology [Text] / S. A. Mussky. - M.: Veche, 2005. - 432 p. - (100 great).
8. Pioneers of rocket technology: Kibalchich, Tsiolkovsky, Zander, Kondratyuk [Text]: scientific works. - M., 1959.
9. Ryzhov, K. V. 100 great inventions [Text] / K. V. Ryzhov. - M.: Veche, 2001. - 528 p. - (100 great).
10. Samin, D. K. 100 great scientific discoveries [Text] / D. K. Samin. - M.: Veche, 2005. - 480 p. - (100 great).
11. Samin, D.K. 100 great scientists [Text] / D.K. Samin. - M.: Veche, 2000. - 592 p. - (100 great).
12. Tsiolkovsky, K. E. The path to the stars [Text]: Sat. science fiction works / K. E. Tsiolkovsky. - M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1961. - 351, p.: ill.

80 years ago, the heart of an outstanding scientist, the founder of theoretical astronautics, stopped beating

The name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is familiar to each of us from school. A brilliant scientist is the author of ideas that are ahead of their time. Long before people began to explore space - at the very beginning of the twentieth century, he expressed the idea of ​​​​the possibility of space flight. Moreover, he imagined what kind of equipment would be capable of going beyond the Earth. It may be a spacecraft, whose work is based on the principles of jet propulsion ... In 1903, he wrote the work "Investigation of world spaces with jet instruments." It said that a ship to fly into space should be like a rocket, grandiose and arranged in a special way. Even then I was thinking about the overloads of astronauts, about how to avoid them ... He spoke about weightlessness, and also proposed an airlock for spacewalks.

Sergei Korolev relied on the work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in his work, and Yuri Gagarin once said: “Tsiolkovsky turned my soul upside down. It was stronger than Jules Verne, HG Wells and other science fiction writers. What the scientist said was confirmed by science and his own experiments.

Tsiolkovsky's life is no less interesting than his ideas. The self-taught scientist graduated from only ... two classes of the gymnasium. About what kind of person Konstantin Eduardovich was, "FACTS" told him great-granddaughter, head of the Tsiolkovsky house-museum in Kaluga Elena Timoshenkova(on the picture).

- Elena Alekseevna, and in your house what reminds you of your famous great-grandfather?

– When a year after the death of Konstantin Eduardovich in 1936, it was decided to open a museum in his house, the family transferred everything that belonged to the scientist: furniture, books, tools ... And a few years later, household items: dishes that he used, a tablecloth embroidered by his wife . Only a few photographs remained at home. There are four of us, great-grandchildren. Konstantin Eduardovich had seven children. My grandmother Maria is one of Tsiolkovsky's daughters. I am the daughter of her youngest son Alexei.

- Fate measured Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 78 years. It was said that he was very afraid of death.

—No, I wasn't afraid. Moreover, in his latest philosophical works, Konstantin Eduardovich wrote that man is a part of the cosmos and that we are not alone in the Universe. And he not only believed in it, but knew it completely. In a number of works, he said that the Universe is like a huge garden, where only one apple tree cannot bear fruit. It is impossible that only our planet is inhabited. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky believed that beings living on other planets are highly developed and highly spiritual. And until earthlings rise to a higher level in moral and spiritual terms, they will not be able to merge into the cosmic community.

- You said that Tsiolkovsky knew about the existence of extraterrestrial life one hundred percent. Where?

— I can't say that. But he could look so far ahead that tens of millions of years seemed completely real to him. Once, an acquaintance told Tsiolkovsky that he was ready to proofread his manuscript. Konstantin Eduardovich replied: “No, you can't do it. You will get confused in the numbers, because for me the figure with twenty zeros is palpable, like a coin in the palm of your hand. Probably, a genius is a genius for thinking differently than everyone else. In 1926, Tsiolkovsky created a plan for space exploration, consisting of 16 points. We are now at about the eighth level. The escape from the atmosphere has already been completed, an international space station has been created, space greenhouses are being developed, which will be necessary for long-term flights to other planets and asteroids. The last points of the plan involve exits to distant worlds and the opportunity for humanity to join the space community.

- When can this happen?

- The time is not marked. Only the condition that I have already mentioned. Earthlings must become highly spiritual.

- In Soviet times, it was argued that science and religion are mutually exclusive things, so I was surprised to read that Tsiolkovsky considered Christ the most interesting philosopher.

- Great-grandfather was a believer, although he rarely went to church. Once he said: “Lord, if you exist, show a cross or a person in heaven.” And God answered, although not immediately. It was in one of the difficult periods of Tsiolkovsky's life - in the early 1880s. Once Konstantin Eduardovich was sitting on the porch of the house and suddenly saw a cross formed from clouds in the sky, which soon gradually transformed into the figure of a man. This event Tsiolkovsky considered very significant for himself. He interpreted it as a sign that higher powers hear and support him. And there were very difficult moments in his life.

- I read that Tsiolkovsky even wrote his own interpretation of the Gospel ...

- It was called the Gospel of Kupala. This work is kept in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Only once it was published by a private publisher and sold out so quickly that even I, alas, did not see it.

— Is it true that your great-grandmother Varvara was shocked when she learned that her husband was going to write his own version of the life of Christ?

- Great-grandfather took up this when he was already over 70. Great-grandmother was very worried about this. Being a deeply religious person, she did not even allow the thought that an ordinary person could take on such a mission.

— How did they meet?

- The young teacher Tsiolkovsky rented a room from her priest father in Borovsk (a small town in the Kaluga province). They were peers. Both she and him are 23 years old. Barbara impressed Constantine with her knowledge of the Gospel. They got married a few months after they met. Lived together for 55 years. My great-grandmother survived my great-grandfather by five years.

Did she realize that her husband was a genius?

“I don’t know, but I respected what he did. The rear, which she provided, gave him the opportunity to create. One of Konstantin Eduardovich's good acquaintances said that it is not known whether Tsiolkovsky would have become Tsiolkovsky if Varvara Evgrafovna had not been next to him.

- They had a hard time - out of seven, only two children survived.

Yes, terrible grief. The eldest of the sons, Ignatius, while a student at Moscow University, committed suicide - poisoned himself with potassium cyanide. He was 19 years old. The reason for his action is unknown. He left no posthumous notes. The second son Alexander died under unclear circumstances. Parents received a notice from Ukraine, where he worked as a teacher, about his death four months after the incident. Leonty died at the age of one from whooping cough, Ivan overstrained himself with a heavy log, and his daughter Anna from consumption. I think that for Tsiolkovsky, work was the salvation.

— For many years he was a teacher, taught mathematics and physics. But he himself did not finish even three classes of the gymnasium, in the second class he was left for the second year.

- At the age of nine, while sledding, Tsiolkovsky caught a cold, then fell ill with scarlet fever, and as a result of complications, he began to hear badly. I didn’t feel like an outcast in the family, but deafness interfered with my studies. Tsiolkovsky, who was expelled from the third grade, did not study anywhere else. I mastered the school curriculum on my own. At the age of 16, he went to enter Moscow at a higher technical school, but since he did not have a certificate of graduation from the gymnasium, he was not accepted. He began to study science in the Chertkovo public library - the only free one at that time in Moscow. Passed from bread to water. The librarian Nikolai Fedorov, a legendary personality, philosopher, friend of Leo Tolstoy, drew attention to him. Nikolai Fedorov recommended books to the young man that could broaden his horizons. Great-grandfather independently studied such disciplines as differential and integral calculus, higher algebra, astronomy, chemistry, mechanics…

- How was the life of a scientist arranged at a time when he was already famous?

“The house has always had a simple atmosphere. There was no extra money, since Konstantin Eduardovich actually worked alone, and the family was big. As for clothes, I got used to old things and loved them. The contrast is amazing: in his work he strove for something new, but in everyday habits he remained a conservative. What is more interesting, my great-grandfather was a sportsman. Skating. At the age of forty, he learned to ride a bicycle. He never had a car. Sailed great. When my grandchildren grew up, sometimes I went with them to the river, taught them to swim. I preferred simple food. For the first - soup with meat, for the second - buckwheat porridge with butter ... My father recalled that for his grandchildren the most delicious dish received from grandfather's hands was black bread with butter, sprinkled with coarse salt. Konstantin Eduardovich cut it into small pieces, which the children called gingerbread. Of the sweets, he recognized only lollipops, he believed that they were the most natural. And when my great-grandfather was 75 years old, he was sent from somewhere a jar of canned peaches. It was such a delicacy that he walked around the house with this jar and treated all family members.

Did you do something around the house?

- Turning designs for his experiments on a lathe, he could make toys for children and grandchildren at the same time - a doll, dishes. He knew everything. He was not afraid of any work and difficulties, neither scientific rivals, nor thieves who tried several times to get into the house. In order to prevent crooks from entering the dwelling, my grandfather came up with a special design of the castle.

How did Tsiolkovsky work?

- In the house they knew that it was impossible to interfere with Konstantin Eduardovich. When, after the flood, the second floor had to be completed, he arranged a study-laboratory there for himself, where the stairs led. Great-grandfather entered the office, and behind him the manhole cover, made at his request by carpenters, slammed shut. It was a sign for everyone that he should not be disturbed under any pretext. And only when the lid was opened, the grandchildren knew that they could go up to their grandfather. There were a lot of interesting things in his office-laboratory: something was spinning, spinning, sparks were flying when experiments were being done.

- Did Konstantin Eduardovich somehow feel his fame?

- During the celebration of his 75th anniversary, ceremonial meetings were held in Moscow and Leningrad, great-grandfather was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for his work in the field of aeronautics and aviation. He wrote to his daughter: "Despite all this hype, I am still lonely and powerless." His ideas were too far ahead of their time to be convinced during their lifetime of their correctness.

- Tsiolkovsky ended his days in Kaluga. Did you want to live in Moscow?

- Great-grandfather was from provincial people who find it hard to be in a big noisy city. He also lived in Kaluga on the outskirts. Near the river, stunningly beautiful nature. Even a trip to Moscow, where the order was presented, was a rather serious test for him.

“But in the capital, he could communicate with fellow scientists, there is the Academy of Sciences.

- Konstantin Eduardovich was self-taught, and official science did not like such people, they were somewhat wary of them. In addition, I think that by nature Tsiolkovsky was a lone scientist. He did not have the title of academician. In all questionnaires he wrote that he was ... a teacher.

“However, Stalin did not answer letters to every teacher. Did they know each other?

- No, my great-grandfather did not know Stalin and was not a member of the party. But in the last days of his life, apparently, at someone's prompting, in order to preserve scientific works, he drew Stalin's attention to them. Tsiolkovsky wrote to him that he was transferring all his heritage to the Soviet authorities. And Stalin answered him, wishing him good health and further fruitful work.

What did Tsiolkovsky die of?

- From stomach cancer. There were a huge number of people at the funeral. A delegation arrived from Moscow. Above the park where Tsiolkovsky was buried, an airship floated in the air and dropped a pennant. All this was incredibly solemn. I think that many townspeople came to understand who this Tsiolkovsky is and what he did. So it was a year later, when his museum opened in Kaluga. After all, many in the city considered Tsiolkovsky just an eccentric. And for the young Soviet country, he became a symbol of self-taught, who, without studying in pre-revolutionary academic institutions, without graduating from universities and without any regalia, established himself as a scientist, and his works were recognized all over the world. Tsiolkovsky after his death had a huge number of followers. His works, mostly technical - on aeronautics and aviation, were published in large numbers. There was no talk of astronautics at that time. They began to talk about it many years later, in fact, after the war.

— Has Tsiolkovsky been to Ukraine?

- Not. But his father was from the village of Korostyanin, Rivne region. Then he studied in St. Petersburg, in the St. Petersburg province he worked as a forester.

What would you say to your great-grandfather today if he could hear you?

- I would say that we keep his memory, that thousands of people from all over the world come to the house where he lived for thirty years to bow to his genius. And they are all amazed at the contrast between the simple life that he lived and the global ideas that he left to us.

Rus. scientist and inventor who made a number of major discoveries in aerodynamics, rocket technology and the theory of interplanetary communications.

Genus. in with. Izhevsk, Ryazan Province, in the family of a forester. After a serious illness (scarlet fever) suffered in childhood, C. almost completely lost his hearing and was deprived of the opportunity to study at school and actively communicate with people. Worked out on my own; from the age of 16 to 19 he lived in Moscow, studying physics and mathematics. sciences in the cycle of secondary and higher education. In 1879, Ts. externally passed the exams for the title of teacher, and in 1880 he was appointed teacher of arithmetic, geometry, and physics at the Borovsk district school in the Kaluga province. By this time, the first scientific studies of C. Independently, not knowing about the discoveries already made, he developed the foundations of kinetic in 1881. theories of gases. His second work - "The Mechanics of the Animal Organism", received a favorable review of the famous physiologist I. M. Sechenov, and Ts. was admitted to membership. Rus. physico-chemical about-va.

The main works of Ts., performed after 1884, were closely related to three major problems: the scientific substantiation of all-metal. a balloon (airship), a well-streamlined airplane and a rocket for interplanetary travel. Most scientific research on all-metal The airship was completed by C. in 1885-92. The description and calculations of the airplane were published. in 1894. Since 1896, Ts. systematically studied the theory of the motion of rocket vehicles and proposed a number of schemes for long-range rockets and rockets for interplanetary travel. After Great Oct. socialist. Revolution, he worked hard and fruitfully on the creation of a theory of flight of jet aircraft.

The result of research work C. on the airship was Op. "Theory and experience of a balloon" (1887), in Krom given scientific and technical. rationale for the design of an airship with a metal shell. Drawings were attached to the work explaining the details of the design. The airship Ts. favorably differed from the designs that preceded it by a number of features. Firstly, it was an airship of variable volume, which made it possible to maintain a constant lifting force at different ambient temperatures and different flight altitudes. The possibility of changing the volume was structurally achieved with the help of a special tightening system and a corrugated shell. Secondly, the gas filling the airship could be heated by the heat of the exhaust gases passed through the coils. The third feature of the design was the use of corrugated thin metal to increase the strength. shell, and the waves of the corrugation were perpendicular to the axis of the airship. The choice of geometric the shape of the airship and the calculation of the strength of its thin shell were first performed by Ts.

However, progressive for its time, the C airship project was not supported; the author was denied even a subsidy for the construction of the model. C.'s conversion to the gene. Russian headquarters. the army was also unsuccessful. The printed work of Ts. "Controlled metal balloon" (1892) received a certain number of sympathetic reviews, and this was the end of the matter.

In 1892, Ts. moved to Kaluga, where he taught physics and mathematics at the gymnasium and the diocesan school. In his scientific activity, he turned to the new and little studied field of aircraft heavier than air.

C. belongs to the wonderful idea of ​​building an airplane with metal. frame. The article "Airplane or Bird-like (Aviation) Flying Machine" (1894) gives a description and drawings of a monoplane, which in its appearance and aerodynamic. layout anticipated the design of aircraft that appeared after 15-18 years. In the C. airplane, the wings have a thick profile with a rounded leading edge, and the fuselage has a streamlined shape. Ts built in 1897 the first in Russia aerodynamic. pipe, developed an experimental technique in it, and later (1900), with a subsidy from the Academy of Sciences, performed blowing through the simplest models and determined the drag coefficients of a ball, flat plate, cylinder, cone, and other bodies. But the work on the airplane also did not receive recognition from representatives of the official Russian. Sciences. For further research in this area, C. had neither the means nor even the moral support.

The most important scientific results were obtained by C. in the theory of rocket motion. Thoughts about using the principle of jet propulsion for the purposes of flying were expressed by Z. as early as 1883, but the creation of a mathematically rigorous theory of jet propulsion dates back to the very end of the 19th century. In 1903, in the article "Investigation of World Spaces with Reactive Instruments", on the basis of general theorems of mechanics, Z. gave the theory of rocket flight, taking into account the change in its mass in the process of movement, and also substantiated the possibility of using rocket vehicles for interplanetary communications. Strict math. proof of the possibility of using a rocket to solve scientific problems, the use of rocket engines to create the movement of grandiose interplanetary ships, belongs entirely to Ts. In this article and in its subsequent continuations, he, for the first time in the world, gave the foundations of the theory of a liquid-propellant jet engine, as well as elements of its design.

In 1929, Z. developed a very fruitful theory of the movement of composite rockets or rocket trains; he proposed two types of composite missiles for implementation. One type is a sequential composite rocket, consisting of several rockets connected one after the other. During takeoff, the last (lower) rocket is the pusher. After using her fuel, she becomes separated from the train and falls to the ground. Then the engine of the rocket, which turned out to be the last, starts to work. This rocket for the rest is pushing until the moment of full use of its fuel, and then also separated from the train. Only the lead rocket reaches the target of the flight, reaching a much higher speed than a single rocket, since it is dispersed by rockets thrown off in the process of movement.

The second type of compound missile (parallel connection of a number of missiles) was named by the C. Missile Squadron. In this case, according to Ts., all rockets work simultaneously, until half of their fuel is used up. Then the extreme missiles drain the remaining fuel supply into the half-empty tanks of the remaining missiles and separate from the rocket train. The process of pouring fuel is repeated until only one head rocket remains from the train, which has gained a very high speed.

The creation of a reasonable design of a composite rocket is one of the most urgent problems that scientists and engineers are working on.

Ts. first solved the problem of rocket motion in a uniform gravitational field and calculated the necessary fuel reserves to overcome the Earth's gravity. Approximately, he considered the influence of the atmosphere on the flight of a rocket and calculated the necessary fuel reserves to overcome the resistance forces of the Earth's air envelope.

C. is the founder of the theory of interplanetary communications. The question of interplanetary travel interested C. from the very beginning of his scientific research. His research for the first time strictly scientifically showed the possibility of flying from space. speeds, despite the high technical. practical difficulties. these flights. He was the first to study the issue of a rocket - an artificial Earth satellite, and expressed the idea of ​​creating extraterrestrial stations as intermediate bases for interplanetary communications, examined in detail the living and working conditions of people on an artificial Earth satellite and interplanetary stations. Ts. put forward the idea of ​​gas rudders to control the flight of a rocket in a vacuum; he suggested gyroscopic stabilization of the rocket in free flight in space where there are no gravity and drag forces. C. understood the need to cool the walls of the combustion chamber of a jet engine, and his proposal to cool the walls of the chamber with fuel components is widely used in modern. jet engine designs.

So that the rocket does not burn out like a meteorite when returning from space. space to Earth, Ts. proposed special trajectories for planning a rocket to cancel the speed when approaching the Earth, as well as ways to cool the walls of the rocket with a liquid oxidizer. He investigated a large number of different oxidizers and combustibles and recommended the following fuel vapors for liquid jet engines: liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen; alcohol and liquid oxygen; hydrocarbons and liquid oxygen or ozone.

At the Sov. authorities, the living and working conditions of Ts. have changed radically. The government provided all kinds of assistance to his research, and great interest was shown in them by public and scientific organizations. C. was assigned a personal pension and provided the opportunity for fruitful work.

C. also belongs to a number of studies in other fields of knowledge: in aerodynamics, philosophy, linguistics, works on the social structure of people's lives on artificial islands floating around the Sun between the orbits of the Earth and Mars. Some of these studies are controversial, some repeat the results obtained by other scientists. Ts. himself knew this well, but in the conditions of pre-revolutionary Kaluga he could not systematically follow the world's scientific literature. In 1928, he wrote: "I discovered a lot that had already been discovered before me. I recognize the significance of such works only for myself, since they gave me confidence in my abilities." C. research on rocketry and the theory of interplanetary travel serve as guiding material for the modern. designers and scientists involved in the creation of jet vehicles. The ideas of C. are being successfully implemented.

Works: Collected works, vol. 1-2, M., 1951-54; Selected works, book. 1-2, L., 1934; Proceedings on rocket technology, M., 1947.

Lit .: Yuriev B. N., Life and work of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, in the book: Works on the history of technology, vol. 1, M., 1952; Kosmodemyansky A. A., K. E. Tsiolkovsky - the founder of modern rocket dynamics, ibid.; his own, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, in the book: People of Russian Science, with a preface. and intro. articles by acad. S. I. Vavilov, vol. 2, M.-L., 1948 (there is a list of works of Ts. and literature about hem); Arlazorov M. S., Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. His life and work, 2nd ed., M., 1957

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

(17.IX.1857-19.IX.1935) - Russian scientist and inventor, founder of modern cosmonautics and rocket technology. Genus. in the family of a forester in the village. Izhevsk (former Ryazan province). As a result of a complication after suffering from scarlet fever in childhood, he lost his hearing and was deprived of the opportunity to enter an educational institution. Independently studied physics and mathematics. In 1879, he passed an external exam for the title of teacher, and the following year he was appointed teacher of mathematics at the county school of mountains. Borovsk. From 1898 he taught mathematics and physics at the women's school in Kaluga.

The first scientific studies of Tsiolkovsky began in the 80s. In 1885-1892. he conducted a significant part of his research to justify the possibility of building an all-metal airship. Since 1896, he began to systematically develop the theory of the movement of jet vehicles. They proposed schemes for long-range missiles and rockets for interplanetary travel. In 1903, in the article "Investigation of the World Spaces with Reactive Instruments", he applied the general laws of mechanics to the theory of flight of a variable-mass rocket and substantiated the possibility of interplanetary communications. Before the Great October Socialist Revolution, Tsiolkovsky's ideas were not appreciated. After the revolution, the Soviet government provided extensive assistance to Tsiolkovsky's research. He was assigned a personal pension and was given the opportunity to work. In 1929, he developed the theory of the motion of composite multi-stage rockets, which has been used with great success in modern astronautics. He was the first to develop the idea of ​​a rocket - an artificial satellite of the Earth and studied the living and working conditions of its crew. He believed that extraterrestrial stations should be intermediate bases for the further expansion of man into space. Tsiolkovsky is also the author of works on aerodynamics, philosophy, he developed social projects for the future of human society.

Currently, the works of Tsiolkovsky have received worldwide recognition. His research and ideas, confirmed by the entire practice of modern astronautics, are widely used in the development of various space projects.

He was an honorary member of the Russian Society of World Science Lovers, an honorary professor at the Academy of the Air Force. N. E. Zhukovsky. In the USSR, a complete collection of Tsiolkovsky's works in four volumes was published, and a gold medal named after him was established for outstanding work in the field of interplanetary communications.

Lit .: Arlazorov M. Tsiolkovsky. - M., "Young Guard", 1962. - Tsiolkovsky K. E. Collected works. T. 1-4. - M., 1951-1964. - Yuriev B. N. Life and work of K. E. Tsiolkovsky. - In the book: Works on the history of technology, vol. 1. - M., 1952.

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Outstanding scientist, one of the founders of astronautics, thinker. Genus. in with. Izhevsk, now Ryazan region; from the family of a forester, a Russified Pole. As a child, he almost completely lost his hearing, and from the age of 14 he studied independently. From the age of 16 to 19 he lived in Moscow, studied physics and mathematics. sciences in the programs of secondary and higher schools. While visiting the Rumyantsev library, he met N.F. Fedorov, who, according to Ts. himself, replaced his university professors. In 1879, Ts. passed an external exam for the title of teacher of arithmetic and geometry. In 1880 he received a teacher's diploma, and until 1920 he worked in the schools of Borovsk, then Kaluga. In the same place he is engaged in scientific research. activity. At the center of his scientific interests were the problems of overcoming the death of a person, the problems of the meaning of life, the problems of space, the place of man in space, the possibility of an infinite human. existence. He considered the invention of rockets and the settlement of mankind (in view of the finiteness of the Earth) in other worlds to be the most important means of solving these problems. In 1924 reprinted. his article on the rocket asserts his world priority in this area. At the end of the 20s. becomes world famous as the head of a new scientific. directions - rocket dynamics. A group for the study of rocket propulsion is being formed, headed by F.A. Zander; S.P. Korolev left this group. Ts. died in Kaluga.

A.P. Alekseev

Space Philosophy C. defined as knowledge based only on the authority of "exact science", in connection with which it is often referred to as a natural science. direction of cosmism. But really cosmic. philosophy - worldview. system, it contains a detailed metaphysics and ethics. Including some fragments of scientific. pictures of the world, outlook. the concept of C. goes far beyond the boundaries of scientific foundations. knowledge. A prominent place in it is given to faith, incl. religious Developing the idea of ​​"original cause" or "cause" of the universe, C. attributed to her the properties that are usually regarded as attributes of God. Implicitly cosmic. philosophy C. experienced a strong influence of theosophy and the occult. A characteristic feature of the cosmic philosophy lies in the fact that it synthesized a variety of currents app. (Plato, Leucippus, Democritus, Leibniz, Büchner, etc.) and Eastern, mainly esoteric philosophy. thoughts. This is the reason for its deep antinomy. The initial principle of cosmic philosophy C. advocates the principle atomistic panpsychism. According to Ts., "the indivisible basis or essence of the world" is constituted by "atoms-spirits" ("ideal atoms", "primitive spirits"). This is the element of metaphysic. substance, different from the elementary particles of modern. physics. "Atoms-spirits" are the simplest "creatures" possessing "sensitivity". In his space ethics Ts. actually denied the personal basis of human. "I". For him, "I" -. it is the sensation of an "atom-spirit" located in living matter. It is the "atoms-spirits" that are the true citizens of the Universe, while a person, like any animal, is a "union" of such atoms living in harmony with each other (Ethics or the natural foundations of morality // Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. F. 555. Op. 1 D. 372). The principle of monism expresses in cosmic. philosophy unity: a) the substantial basis of the world; b) material and spirit. the beginnings of the universe; c) living and non-living matter ("everything is alive and only temporarily is in non-existence, in the form of unorganized dead matter" (Scientific ethics // Essays on the Universe. M., 1992. P. 119); d) the unity of man and the Universe. Among the main belong to space philosophy also principles infinity,evolution and anthropic principle. The universe, according to the cosmic philos., is a holistic living organism, to-ry "is similar to the kindest and most reasonable animal" (The Will of the Universe. Unknown Reasonable Forces // Essays on the Universe. P.43). This understanding of the cosmos, which goes back to the Platonic tradition, Ts. clearly contrasted the image of the universe with a class. natural sciences. There can be many cosmos in infinite time, just as they exist in infinite space. Opposing the recognition of the principle of increasing entropy, C. spoke of the "eternal emerging youth" of the universe. He considered all processes to be periodic and reversible. This is what cosmic evolutionism consists of. philosophic, which also includes the idea of ​​an infinite increase in the power of the non-cosmic mind. "Meaning" of the universe C. saw in the desire of matter for self-organization, the inevitability of the emergence of highly developed cosmic. civilizations. The idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe unity of man and the cosmos found expression in Ts. in the form of two additional principles of cosmism in their content: the "will" of the cosmos almost fatalistically determines the activity and behavior of man, secondly, the metaphysics of human destiny receives an original interpretation in cosmic philosophy: there is no death); in the rhythms of space. evolution, death merges with a "new perfect birth", this provides for each being a subjective feeling of "never ending happiness"; 2) the principle, which can be formulated as follows: "The fate of the Universe depends on the cosmic mind, that is, humanity and other space civilizations, their transformative activity." Both of these principles coexist with C. He believed that for space exploration it is necessary to intervene in the evolution of the Homo sapiens species, improve biol. human nature through nature. and arts, selection. Highly developed space civilizations, visiting the worlds, on which "imperfect, unreasonable and painful life" develops, has the right to destroy it, replacing it with "its own perfect breed" (Cosmic Philosophy // Essays on the Universe, p. 230). In the distant future, cosmic the mind will consider it good for itself to turn into radiant energy.

V.V. Kazyutinsky

Op.: Dreams of earth and sky. Kaluga, 1895 ;Nirvana. Kaluga, 1914 ;Grief and genius. Kaluga, 1916 ;Wealth of the Universe. Kaluga, 1920 ;Living Universe, 1923 ;Monism of the Universe. Kaluga, 1925 ;The future of the Earth and humanity. Kaluga, 1928 ;Public organization of mankind. Kaluga, 1928 ;Will of the Universe. Unknown intelligent forces. Kaluga, 1928 ;Mind and passion. Kaluga, 1928 ;Engines of progress. Kaluga, 1928 ;Self love,or true selfishness. Kaluga, 1928 ;Past of the Earth. Kaluga, 1928 ;Astronomy goals. Kaluga, 1929 ;Plant of the future. Space animal. Spontaneous generation. Kaluga, 1929 ;Scientific ethics. Kaluga,1930. Selected Works. Book 1,2. L., 1934 ;Sobr. op. T.1-4. M., 1951-1964 ;Thoughts about the future. Statements of K.E. Tsiolkovsky. Kaluga, 1958 ;Handwritten materials by K.E. Tsiolkovsky. Cm.:Proceedings of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. M.,1966. Issue 22;Monism of the Universe // Russian cosmism. M., 1993 ;

Space philosophy // Ibid.

A.P. Alekseev

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Outstanding Russian. scientist-founder of astronautics, original thinker and science fiction writer. Genus. in the village of Izhevsk (Spassky district of the Ryazan province), lost his hearing in childhood and from the age of 14 was engaged in self-education, in 1879 he passed the exam for the title of teacher externally and taught physics and mathematics in the schools of Borovsk and Kaluga all his life. During classes at Rumyantsevskaya Library in Moscow, he met a philosopher and bibliographer N. Fedorov, which "replaced ... university professors"; not without the influence of Fedorov's "Philosophy of the Common Cause" their own philosophies matured. Z.'s views - a bizarre eclectic mixture of daring scientific. projects facing the future (C. can be considered a pioneer of domestic futurology), borrowed elements mysticism and the occult, a kind of religion. utopianism; all together belongs to the tradition of Russian. "cosmism" (cf. Religion, Philosophy, Utopia). At the end of 19 - early. 20th century published (often at his own expense) DOS. scientific works that laid the foundation for modern astronautics (cf. space flights); scientific Ts.'s merits were in the floor. least recognized only after Oct. revolution, the scientist was assigned a personal pension, and all his main. republished works. and became the property of science. communities.

NF TV-in Ts. is inseparable from his scientific. activities, on the one hand, and his philosophy. views - with others; the scientist considered this literature as one of the means of popularizing scientific. knowledge, so it would be more correct to call all his novels "science fiction essays". book hero "On the moon" (1893 ) moves to moon in a dream, although the fundamental scientific the work of C. "Free space" was written four years earlier; but already on the trail. op. - "Change in Relative Gravity on Earth" (1894 ) - a grandiose "tour" of solar system with thoughts on extraterrestrial life and prospects astroengineering; subsequent "Dreams of Earth and Sky and the Effects of Gravity" (1895 ; others - "Heaviness gone") represent a thought experiment; the "lit." the story remains "Out of Earth"(hand. 1896; fragm. 1918 ; 1920 ), the enigmatic and never explained prologue to the swarm suggests curious but unrealized lit. the plans of C. All his SF products. ed. under one cover on Sat. "The path to the stars" (1960 ).

These works, as well as "fantastic-philosophical." (pl. were not published until very recently), unite several. fundamental ideas that form the basis philosophy C. Kosmich. space was conceived by him not as an empty "receptacle", but as a stage, on which a multitude of various forms act extraterrestrial life- from the most primitive to immortal and almost omnipotent (see. Immortality, Gods and Demons, Religion, Overmind). For humanity itself, in full accord with N. Fedorov, C. assumed the inevitable "battle with death", in the process of which a person will gradually improve his body, turning it into some kind of autotrophic creature that feeds on radiant energy and practically independent of the environment (cf. Biology, Superman). In this perspective space flight- not an end in itself, but only the first step towards the transformation of the earthly reason into the omniscient and omnipotent ruler of space and time. On the whole, the influence of C.'s ideas on the process of "cosmization" of public consciousness in the 20th century, and, as a result, on the cosmic. NF is hard to overestimate.

Vl. G., R. Shch.

N.A. Rynin "K.E. Tsiolkovsky, his life, works and rockets" (1931).

B.N. Vorobyov "Tsiolkovsky" (1940).

D. Dar "Good afternoon" (1948), D.Dar"The Ballad of a Man and His Wings" (1956), M.S. Arlazorov "Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, his life and work (1857-1938)" (1952; added 1957).

M.S.Arlazorov "Tsiolkovsky" (1962).

A.A. Kosmodemyansky "Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky" (1976).

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Russian scientist and inventor in the field of aeronautics, aviation and rocket technology, the founder of modern cosmonautics. Author of numerous scientific works. Developed a project for an all-metal airship. He was the first to put forward the idea of ​​building an airplane with a metal frame. In 1897, he built a wind tunnel and developed an experimental technique in it. He developed the theory of the flight of rocket aircraft in the stratosphere and aircraft schemes for flights at hypersonic speeds. In 1954, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR established a gold medal to them. K. E. Tsiolkovsky "For outstanding work in the field of interplanetary communications." His name is the Moscow Aviation Technological Institute, State. museum of the history of astronautics, a crater on the moon.

Tsiolk about Vovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Genus. 1857, mind. 1935. Scientist, inventor, founder of modern astronautics. Specialist in the field of aero- and rocket dynamics, the theory of aircraft and airship.

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