<http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1508/1>Link
--Posted By johannes to <http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/11/red-cosmos-ke-tsiolkovskii-grandfather.htm>monochrom at 11/22/2009 03:50:00 PM
The details of Konstantin Tsiolkovskii's life, as
James Andrews explains in his new study of the
man, are more complex and far more interesting than the legend.
Anyone who has studied the history of the space
age has come across the name Konstantin
Tsiolkovskii (18571935), often under the more
common alternative spelling Tsiolkovsky. He is
generally credited with the development of the
basic mathematical formulae for space travel.
Other than that, he is often described as the man
who after the revolution inspired a small group
of space enthusiasts, including Glushko and
Korolev, to begin serious work on rocket
technology. The details of his life, as James
Andrews explains in his new study of the man, are
more complex and far more interesting than the legend.
The details are interesting in and of their own
right. Herman Oberth wrote to Tsiolkovskii in
1929: "I am sorry I did not hear about your work
prior to now, or I may have been further along
with my own analysis and discoveries." Certainly
the paper the Russian wrote in 1903 on rockets
fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen was
far ahead of its time. His speculations about
what would happen to the human body in weightlessness were equally prescient.
