Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski

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Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski
Tsiolkovsky crater on the back of the moon - taken by Apollo 13

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky ( Russian Константин Эдуардович Циолковский , .. Scientific transl Konstantin Ėduardovič Ciolkovskij , Polish Konstanty Edward Ciolkowski * 5 . Jul / 17th September  1857 greg. In Ischewskoje ; † 19th September 1935 in Kaluga ) was a Russian / Soviet Inventor. He is counted among the pioneers of space travel . Ziolkowski was the founder of modern cosmonautics and is considered one of the most famous researchers in this field. However, his technical vision only became known towards the end of his life and became an inspiration for many later scientists and technicians .

Life

Ziolkowski was born in Ischewskoje in the Ryazan Governorate in 1857 as the son of the Polish-born Orthodox priest Edward Ciołkowski and a Russian woman of Tatar origin named Maria Jumaschowa. At the age of ten, he became almost deaf from scarlet fever and had to leave school. He continued his self-taught on and was supported by his family to study in Moscow sent. There he studied physics , astronomy , mechanics and geometry .

After three years, Tsiolkowski was brought back home by his father. He then gave classes in mathematics and physics in his hometown until he was appointed as a mathematics teacher at the Borovsk district school in the Kaluga governorate in 1882. He had now married and become a father. During the Russian Revolution he lived very withdrawn.

Inspired by science fiction literature and the stories of Jules Verne , Ziolkowski began to write stories about interplanetary space travel himself. He allowed more and more physical and technical problems to flow into it and developed into the author of theoretical treatises. From around 1885 he made a number of considerations for the realization of space flights , also turning his attention to all-metal airships .

In 1886 Ziolkowski published the study Theoria Aerostatika , which was followed in 1892 by the Aerostat Metallitscheski (theory of an all-metal airship). In the 1880s he developed a concept for all-metal airships, which was implemented as the ZMC-2 in the 1930s . By the time he died, he had published 35 books, articles and writings on airship issues .

In 1895 he proposed a space tower and a space elevator for the first time .

In one room of his apartment he built Russia's first wind tunnel and determined the air resistance of various objects. Increasingly, he began to devote himself to rocket research . He realized that the solid fuel rockets previously used for fireworks and military purposes would be too weak to reach space. So he suggested the use of liquid rocket fuels ( hydrogen , oxygen and hydrocarbons ).

The culmination of his work was the basic rocket equation , which he published in 1903 in the Russian journal Wissenschaftliche Rundschau under the title Exploring Space Using Reaction Apparatus. In addition to work on the liquid rocket engine , the cooling of the combustion chamber and the control of the rocket using thrusters and gyroscopic instruments , he also put the principle of the multi-stage rocket on a scientific basis with the basic rocket equation . He also dealt with issues relating to the operation of space stations , the industrial uses of space and the use of its resources.

Shortly before his death, Ziolkowski was involved in the production of the Soviet science fiction film Cosmic Journey ; some movie scenes were shot in his institute.

Importance and appreciation

Ziolkowski was visionary ahead of his time with his ideas and received little attention in Tsarist Russia .

The Russian-German author Friedrich Zander (often also Fridrik Tsander) remembered the publication of Hermann Oberth's book Die Rakete zu den Planetraum from 1923, which triggered wide international resonance and can be considered the actual date of birth of a now steadily increasing scientific occupation with rocket technology and space travel called) again from a magazine article he had once read. He came into contact with Tsiolkovsky and published a book about his person and work, which Tsiolkovsky became known to a wider Russian and international audience.

Ziolkowski's work now found recognition and support in the political system of the Soviet Union . His ideas became extremely popular. The spaceship in the novel Aëlita by the writer Alexei Tolstoy corresponds almost entirely to Ziolkowski's ideas. Together with Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard , Ziolkowski is considered a pioneer and pioneer in space travel . His last two publications are the album of the cosmic journeys from 1932 and the highest speed in rockets from 1935. However, he was not allowed to experience the practical implementation of his ideas. Ziolkowski predicted the beginning of space travel in 1950 (actually 1957, see Sputnik ) and the first man in space for 2000 (actually 1961, see Yuri Gagarin ).

In Ziolkowski's honor, a crater on the far side of the moon and the asteroid (1590) Tsiolkovskaja were named after him. His former home in Kaluga is now a museum. In 1987, to commemorate his 130th birthday, the Soviet Union minted a 1 ruble coin from a copper-nickel alloy with a weight of approx. 17 grams and a diameter of 31 millimeters. The Russian city of Uglegorsk was in 2015 on the initiative of Vladimir Putin in Ziolkowski renamed. During the GDR era, the 6th Polytechnic High School in the Berlin district of Marzahn bore his name, but was renamed after 1990. In addition, streets in some east German cities have been named after him.

In the Antarctic, the Ziolkowski glacier , the Ziolkowski island and indirectly also the Kupol Ciolkovskogo bear his name.

Quotes

“It is true that the earth is the cradle of mankind, but man cannot stay in the cradle forever. The solar system will be our kindergarten. "

- Konstantin Ziolkowski

"First come the thinking, the fantasy and the fairy tales, then the scientific calculation."

- Konstantin Ziolkowski

Works

Science fiction works published in German:

  • On the moon: A fantastic story (original title: Na lune , translated by Ena von Baer), (= The New Adventure , Volume 80), New Life, Berlin (East) 1956, DNB 364826460 .
  • Outside the earth: a classic science fiction novel by Konstantin Eduardovič Ciolkovskij, with an introduction to the life and work of the famous Russian rocket and space pioneer and explanatory notes on the text by Winfried Petri as well as handwritten sketches by the author (original title: Vne zemlji , German Translation by Winfried Petri). Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-30448-9 .
  • Suffering and Genius (1916), The Ideal Order of Life (1917), The Genius Among Men (1918), The Living Universe (1918), The Organization of Men on Earth (1918), The Gradation of Laws for Communities of Different Categories ( 1919), New Spheres of Knowledge (1931–1933), The Cosmic Philosophy (1935). In: Boris Groys, Michael Hagemeister (ed.): Die Neue Menschheit. Biopolitical utopias in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century (= stw 1763), Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, pp. 236–390, ISBN 978-3-518-29363-8 .

literature

  • Thomas Bührke: Lift - off. The history of space travel. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-8270-5260-2 .
  • Linus Hauser : Critique of the Neomythischen Vernunft Vol. 3. The fictions of science on the way into the 21st century. Paderborn 2016. pp. 281–297.
  • Nikola Stilijanov Kalicin: Space flights from Tsiolkowski to Gagarin. VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1961, DNB 452297451 .
  • Arkadij Aleksandrovič Kosmodemjanski: Konstantin Eduardowitsch Tsiolkowski (= biographies of outstanding natural scientists, technicians and medical professionals , volume 43), edited by D. Goetz, German translation by Hans Dietrich, Mir, Moscow / Teubner BSB, Leipzig 1979, DNB 800286871 .
  • Karl Rezac: The crazy inventor or how the life of Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski changed after a house search , illustrations by Eberhard Neumann. Children's book publisher, Berlin (East) 1973, DNB 740142666 .
  • Brian M. Stableford , John Clute : Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin. In: John Clute, Peter Nicholls : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 3rd edition (online edition), version dated April 4, 2017.
  • Peter Stache: Soviet missiles in the service of science and defense. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin (East) 1987, ISBN 3-327-00302-5 .
  • AT Grigorian: Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 13 : Hermann Staudinger - Giuseppe Veronese . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1976, p. 482-484 .
Biographical novel

Web links

Commons : Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zdzisław Brodzki: Lotnictwo. WNT publishing house, Warsaw 1979, ISBN 83-204-0005-8
  2. ^ Markus Lütkemeyer: Five minutes of philosophy: The column. ( Memento of April 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.5 MB) Fliege , issue 8, WS 2007/2008, p. 20.
  3. ↑ Juliette Faure: Immortal Russians. Translated from the French by Claudia Steinitz. LE MONDE diplomatique, December 13, 2018, accessed November 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Ziolkowski, Konstantin Eduardowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Константин Эдуардович Циолковский; Ciolkovskij, Konstantin Eduardovič
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-Soviet space pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Izhevskoye , Ryazan Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1935
Place of death Kaluga , RSFSR, Soviet Union