About Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

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Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a Russian aeronautics research scientist who was born on September 17, 1857. He pioneered rocket and space research with his contributions in theorising problems of rocket propulsion and space travel. He was a self-educated academic who gained all his knowledge through reading and practice, as his deafness prevented him from joining school in early years. He died on 19 September 1935.

Tsiolkovsky was very interested in the philosophy of space as well as the engineering needed to make space flight possible. “The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices”, one of his most significant works published in 1903, is regarded as the first academic paper on rocketry. Tsiolkovsky was the first to provide an estimate for the escape velocity required to obtain the smallest possible orbit around the Earth; he proposed his estimated 8 km/s could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fuelled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, remarkably similar to the fuel system used by modern day rocket sequences. He stated, though that the velocity and range of a rocket were limited by velocity of the exhaust gases escaping the rocket. He also suggested quartz windows and an outer layer fabricated with refractory substances to protect the spacecraft from the heat build up while moving through the atmosphere , and air locks during atmospheric exit. He was also able to describe that the main characteristics of the motion of objects are determined only by the forces of interaction between distinguishable objects in a given mechanical system. He also deduced that the “Laws of Conservation of the Dynamic Magnitudes” (i.e. momentum and kinetic energy) are significantly relevant when talking about motion. The ex...

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Works Cited

Wikipedia. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky (accessed November 28, 2011).

Various. Legacy of Tsiolkovsky. -. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tsiolkovsky_legacy.html (accessed Novermber 22, 2011).

Anon. "Space and Astronomy: Decade by Decade." Scribd. 2007. http://www.scribd.com/doc/48934293/Space-and-Astronomy-Decade-by-Decade-2007 (accessed Novermber 21, 2011).

Duchamp, Marcel. Konstantin Tsiokovsky. September 17, 2010. http://marcinchains.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/konstantin-tsiolkovsky-september-17-1857-september-19-1935/ (accessed Novermber 24, 2011).

Kosmodemyansky, Prof. A. In Konstanin Tsiolkovsky: His Life and His Work, translated by X. Danko, 8-14. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press Of the Pacific, 2000.

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