Nikolai Ivanovich Kibaltschitsch

NI Kibaltschitsch

Nikolai Ivanovich Kibaltschitsch ( Russian: Николай Иванович Кибальчич ; * 19 October ^July / 31 October 1853 ^greg. In Korop , Chernigov Governorate , Russian Empire , now Ukraine ; † 3 April ^July / 15 April 1881 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian revolutionary who belonged to the terrorist wing of the Narodniki and was one of the Pervomartovtsy ("The March 1st"). He was also a technical visionary who proposed a futuristic rocket engine.

Life

Kibaltschitsch was the son of an Orthodox priest. After graduating from school in 1871, he entered the St. Petersburg School of Engineering for Transportation. Before graduating, he moved to the Medical and Surgical Academy in 1873. In 1875 he was arrested for possessing anti-Tsarist literature and exiled to Siberia until 1878. After his return he joined the secret society Narodnaja Wolja (People's Will), whose goal was the killing of Tsar Alexander II . The bomb that killed the Tsar on March 1, 1881 in Saint Petersburg on the Griboyedov Canal , the site of the later Church of the Resurrection , had been built by Kibaltschitsch. He was arrested on March 17th and sentenced to death .

In the 17 days leading up to his execution on April 3, he is said to have written a memorandum describing how a spacecraft was propelled by gunpowder explosions. He is said to have asked the prison authorities to send it to the Home Office for review in the hopes of obtaining a postponement of the execution. However, the prison did not send it to the Ministry until a year later, where it disappeared in the archives. In 1917 it was rediscovered by Nikolai Rynin and published in 1918 in the magazine «Былое» (Past). This magazine published articles about the Narodniki movement, so the article about space travel received little attention.

The idea was proposed from 1880 independently of the German engineer Hermann Ganswindt (published in 1891). In the 1940s, among others, Krafft Ehricke and Stanisław Ulam suggested propelling a spaceship with atom bomb explosions, which was then investigated in the Orion project .

The lunar crater Kibal'chich and Mount Kibal'chich in Antarctica are named after him.

Kibaltschitsch is an uncle of the revolutionary Victor Serge .

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personal data
SURNAME	Kibaltschitsch, Nikolai Ivanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Кибальчич, Николай Иванович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian revolutionary, terrorist (Narodnik) and missile pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH	October 31, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH	Korop , Chernigov Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH	April 15, 1881
Place of death	St. Petersburg