Tsiolkovsky: Unappreciated Visionary

Abstract

Coming from humble peasant origins and burdened with hearing and vision difficulties, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky rose above these obstacles. Lacking a formal education, armed with drive and a hunger for knowledge, Tsiolkovsky pursued education on his terms, resulting in contributions to the newly emerging field of astronautics that resonate today. His mass-thrust equation is the cornerstone of present-day spacecraft and heavy-lift vehicle engineering. The groundwork for dirigibles, space stations, pressure suits, and liquid rocket fuels laid by Tsiolkovsky was visionary. This singular mind was a prolific writer, publishing more than 400 works in his lifetime. Though not readily accepted in his time, there is no aspect of modern life unaffected by the genius of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

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A product of Imperial Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s humble origins mask the far-reaching nature of the impact he had during his life and far beyond. There is nothing in the modern world that is not directly affected by his work. Entirely self-educated, he overcame several disadvantages and deficits. Living during a crucial period of advancement in science, literature, music and the arts, it wasn’t until the waning years of his life that he would begin to gain the recognition he so richly deserved.

Across Europe, all facets of science and culture were impacted by many of history’s most memorable names. Great works of literature were flowing from the pens of European writers Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A trend echoed in Russia with classic works from Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekov, and Mikhail Lermontov. Resounding musical compositions by Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg, and Johannes Brahms filled concert halls in the west. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov were defining the soul of Russia.

Like literature and music, the visual arts were transformed as well. Challenging the European art world were visionaries such as Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh. Their Russian counterparts are no less remarkable: Ilya Repkin, Aleksandr Golovin, and Wassily Kandinsky.

With the tidal wave of artistic genius that washed over the whole of the European continent, there was another storm that would impact Russia, Europe, and the world. Building on the advancements of the preceding century and the explosion of industrial might, the scientific world’s impact was astonishing. Intellectual giants of the age, scientific immortals—Nikola Tesla, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and Alfred Nobel—roamed the scientific landscape. Mother Russia was no less influential in the sciences. Like so many Russian scientists, Dmitri Mendeleyev and Ivan Pavlov made ground-breaking contributions to their respective fields of study, advancements in every area of science that have wide-ranging effects today.

In all of this, there is one mind that, in spite of the visionary nature of his work, was dismissed. As the nineteenth century closed, ushering in innovations and discoveries realized in its wake, Tsiolkovsky would produce his most impactful and enduring works. Whether because of his humble origins, lack of formal education, or his place of birth, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and his work largely ignored.

Humble Origins

Entering the world on September 17, 1873, Konstantin was the third of six children, the youngest of three boys born to Edvard, the grandson of Polish immigrants, and Maria Tsiolkovsky, of Russian and Tatar descent. During Konstantin’s youth, his father was a lumberman along the Oka river outside of Izhevsk at a time when foresting in the area was become harshly regulated. 

At ten years old, Konstantin contracted Scarlet Fever, a disease that is commonly fatal to children during this period. Though he survived an extreme fever, he lost about 90% of his hearing (bradyacuasia). Immediately following his recovery, his mother made a concerted effort to teach her son to read and write, as well as the foundations of mathematics, working to ensure that Konstantin had little sense of his disability.

The family moved to Ryazan in 1867, following Edvard’s dismissal from the Forest Service. It was here Konstantin’s father work as a teacher of natural history in the local high school. This position was short-lived, prompting the family to move to Vyatka in 1868. Shortly after arriving in Ryazan, Edvard managed to get his son enrolled in high school, in spite of Konstantin’s hearing loss.

Following the death of his 38-year-old mother in 1870 and frustrated with his inability to hear or understand his teachers, Konstantin withdrew from the Vyatka high school. This ended his formal education. 

Given the stalwart nature of his character, he felt compelled “to achieve great feats and earn people’s approval and not descend into a state of regret.” And so he began a lifetime of self-education.

Outgrowing Traditional Education

Left to his own devices, he immersed himself in books, going beyond anything available or accessible to him in a traditional classroom. This move added clarity and understanding to the subjects that were so muddled in school.

“When I was 14 to 15 years of age, I became interested in physics, chemistry, mechanics, astronomy, Mathematics, and more. Books of course, were few and difficult to acquire, and so often had to rely more on my own intuition and deliberate mentally on concepts. I progressed further than what I had read, not stopping at just the context. I did not understand many items and there was no way to explain them to me, and even then, with my handicap they could not help me anyway. This forced me to develop the ability to think independently, to resolve technical questions on my own.”

Having exhausted the educational resources of Izhevsk, Konstantin’s father scraped together the money to send his son to Moscow. Upon his arrival, the 16-year-old Tsiolkovsky rented the corner of a room from a laundress. Living on a 15-ruble stipend from his father, most of which he spent on books and supplies for his experiment and models, he survived literally on brown bread and water, costing him 90 kopeks a month. 

Seen as an unkempt peasant, Moscow did not greet Tsiolkovsky warmly. With his disability and the reception he received upon his arrival, he retreated into a more familiar and welcoming world: books. Until its closure a year after his arrival, the young man spent nearly every daylight hour at the Chertkov Library. With its collection transferred to the nearby Rumyantsev Library, Konstantin followed. It was here he would meet one of the most transformative figures in his life.

An Inspiration

Nikolai Fyodorov, an acknowledged cosmist, was a librarian at the Rumyantsev Library. The “Moscovite Socrates” to many, Fyodorov took Tsiolkovsky into his tutelage. It was here that Konstantin’s vision migrated from earthly concerns to the vast expanse of the cosmos. During Konstantin’s studies, the Rumyantsev hosted a bevy of great Russians: Leo Tolstoy, Aleksandr Ostrovzhsky, Nikolia Zhukovsky, among others.

Introduced to several works of science fiction by Fyodorov, the young man’s vision turned to the future and humanity’s ultimate place among the stars.  Most influential among these was Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. Visions of the stars and planets played in his mind. Continuing his self-taught studies of physics, chemistry, and astronomy—and captivated by the probability of space travel—he was spellbound by future possibilities. Inspired by the fantastical works and worlds of Verne and other 19th century writers like him, Tsiolkovsky gradually turned his efforts to reach beyond the earth and its atmosphere, at least theoretically.

During his first year in Moscow, Konstantin mastered mathematics and physics, moving on to differential and integral equations, analytic geometry, and spherical trigonometry in the second. With the closure of the library each day, he would go home and delve into that day’s discoveries through experiments, both physical and theoretical. It was from these mental exercises that his first concept for a space ship was born.

Growing Beyond

After three years in Moscow, the 19-year-old returned briefly to Vyatsk, then on to Ryazan. Receiving an appointment by the Ministry of Education, Tsiolkovsky moved to Borovsk, south of Moscow, accepting a position as a mathematics and physics teacher. His period in Borovsk (1880-1892) would witness the further development of his ideas, theories, and mind. It was here that he publishes “Graphic Portrayal of Feelings,” his first scientific article, an exploration of universal history and the philosophy of fatalism. This was closely followed by “Theory of Gases” later in 1880, a foundational work in the kinetic theory of gases.

Unaware of other works on the subject, Tsiolkovsky’s “Theory of Gases” contained little original work. Though it did garner the young scientist some attention for “the great abilities of the author and his diligence, since the author did not receive higher education and was able to conclude such concepts based on information he acquired on his own,” further…In view if [sic] this, we will be very interested in promoting further research to be undertaken by the author.” This did not deter him. Instead, it inspired him to redouble his efforts. He responded with “Mechanics Applied to Moving Animals,” republished in 1920. While in Borovsk, Konstantin ventured into writing science fiction, ultimately publishing more than twenty works in the genre. Of the works he published while in Borovsk, four dealt with aerostats (dirigibles much like Germany’s Hindenberg), two with space, two with philosophy, two with chemistry and physics, and on psychology. 

With his wife Varvara (they married in 1880), and their first four children, Konstantin moved the family to Kaluga, just south of Borovsk in 1892. Working as a high school teacher, he would do the bulk of his academic writing in Kaluga. It is here that Tsiolkovsky would far outstrip his humble origins and lack of formal education and produce ideas that would take decades to gain acceptance in the scientific community. Tsiolkovsky’s works and investigations included discussions on multi-staged rockets using liquid fuels, with an emphasis on LOx (liquid oxygen) and hydrogen, pressure suits for use in the vacuum of space, multi-stage rockets, orbital stations, aerostats, and fixed-wing monoplane aircraft (20 years before the first flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina).

Unappreciated

While he was most prolific in his studies of dirigibles, his most famous work was what appears to be a simple formula that addresses the relationship between mass and thrust in lifting objects into orbit around the earth. Known as the Tsiolkovsky Equation, this work of genius would have a profound impact on research, design, and life for decades to come, published in 1903. This equation would become the foundation of the work of many men. These men who would share the dream of propelling man beyond the atmosphere at a time when powered flight a few hundred feet above the earth was becoming a reality.

With the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, petty jealousies would take their toll on the visionary Tsiolkovsky. In November 1919, Konstantin’s arrest by the Cheka (ChK – Extraordinary Commission), the Revolutionary Secret Police, led to his detention in Moscow’s notorious Lubianka prison on charges of providing the Whites information about Red Army activities. Held for two weeks, he was released to the streets in poor health and starving and found his way home from Moscow to Kaluga two days later. Arriving home, his wife Varvara barely recognized him. The accusation was levied against him by a former associate deemed “psychologically unstable by the Cheka.

Tsiolkovsky received little support from the government for his research. On one occasion, he received 500,000 rubles, in 1921, for his work on dirigibles and an academic pension from the government. Hyperinflation rendered the award virtually worthless, the equivalent to about 30 prewar rubles. Like the single award, his monthly pension was 500,000 rubles. 

His work in the field of spaceflight was not as warmly received. Konstantin lamented, following affirmation of his work by Hermann Oberth—a German—“do we always have to get from foreigners what originated in our boundless homeland and died in loneliness from neglect?” In the mid-1920s, twenty years after the publication of “Exploration of Outer Space Using Jet-Propelled Rockets” in 1903, his Tsiolkovsky’s work was gaining notice, without the assistance of the Russian government. His friends and community in Kaluga funded the republication of this work. It was only in the last ten years of his life that this and other related research gained both widespread acceptance, but was still an outsider in scientific and government circles.

Prolific Contributions

The last ten years (1926-1936) of his life saw him publish as much as he had in the preceding forty years. Now in the popular consciousness, there was a growing interest in his work and spaceflight and the formation of ‘space societies’ in Russia and Europe. The influence of his work was particularly felt in Western Europe—specifically France (Robert Esnault-Pelterie) and Germany (Wernher von Braun)—and brought to the United States following World War II. When the Allies captured Peenemunde, Germany’s missile development and test facility on the country’s north coast, a German copy of Tsiolkovsky’s work was found with “almost every page …embellished by von Braun’s comments and notes.” At the twilight of his life, Tsiolkovsky witnesses the birth and flight of the first Russian rockets, design that far-outperformed the designs of the American Robert Goddard.

His work was the subject of Soviet revisionism following his death. A resurgence in the publication of Tsiolkovsky’s research and works about the scientist took place two decades after his passing. A telling tale of a man neglected and dismissed in his own time only to be recognized for his pure genius just as the competition to get into space was heating up. 

Recognized and mourned in his home of Kaluga, it would take the rest of the nation well into the 1950s to realize the impact he made on the sciences during and after his life. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is now a hero in the national consciousness of Russians and greatly respected worldwide for his contributions.