Unit VI konstantin tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of astronautic theory. He was born in Izhevskoye, in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Edward Ciolkowski, was Polish; his mother, Maria Yumasheva, was an educated Russian woman. As a child, Konstantin caught scarlet fever and became hard of hearing. He was not accepted at elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was home schooled until the age of sixteen.

Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of human spaceflight and the first man to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Nearly deaf, he worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920. Only from the mid 1920s onwards the importance of his work was acknowledged by others, and Tsiolkovsky was honoured for it. He died on 19 September 1935 in Kaluga.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Tsiolkovsky delved into theories of heavier-than-air flying machines, independently working through many of the same calculations that the Wright brothers were doing at the same time. However, he never built any practical models, and his interest shifted to more ambitious topics. Tsiolkovsky's ideas were little known outside Imperial Russia, and the field lagged until German and other scientists independently made the same calculations decades later.

In 1923, German Hermann Oberth published his thesis "By Rocket into Planetary Space", which triggered wide-scaled interest and scientific research on the topic of space flight. It also reminded Friedrich Zander about once having read an article on the subject. He contacted the author and became active in promoting Tsiolkovsky's work, and developing it further. In 1924 Zander established the first astronautics society in the Soviet Union, the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel, and later researched and built liquid-fuelled rockets named OR-1 (1930) and OR-2 (1933).

Only late in his lifetime Tsiolkovsky was honoured for his pioneering work. On 23 August 1924 he was elected as a first professor of the Military Aerial Academy named after N. E. Zhukovsky.

His most important work, published in 1903, was «The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices», arguably the first academic treatise on rocketry. Tsiolkovsky calculated that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8 km (5 miles)/second and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

During his lifetime he published over 500 works on space travel and related subjects, including science fiction novels.

Tsiolkovsky developed the idea of air cushion since 1921, publishing fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train". In 1929 Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book “Space Rocket Trains”.

His and Oberth's work influenced later rocketeers throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun, and was also studied by the Americans in the 1950s and 1960s as they sought to understand the Soviet Union's successes in space flight.

Topical vocabulary

imperial – имперский	to trigger – вызывать
astronautic theory – космическая теория	the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel – Организация по изучению межпланетных путешествий
scarlet fever – скарлатина	pioneering work – новаторская работа
rocket propulsion – ракетный двигатель	Military Aerial Academy – военно-воздушная академия
to conceive – задумать, замыслить	reaction device – реактивное устройство
a space elevator – стартовый стол	treatise – трактат
deaf – глухой	rocketry – ракетостроение
to retire – уйти на пенсию	a multistage rocket – многоступенчатая ракета
to delve – углубляться	air cushion – воздушная подушка
Imperial Russia – царская Россия	racketeer – специалист по ракетной технике
to lag – отставать, запаздывать	to seek (sought, sought) – пытаться