Five brilliant ideas of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Brief biography of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Interesting facts and photos

Introduction

I chose this topic because Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky is a scientist with a capital letter. His scientific works have been studied and will be studied for a long time to come. Tsiolkovsky made a great contribution to the development of the natural sciences, so such a person cannot be ignored. He is an author on aerodynamics, aeronautics and many others. Representative of Russian cosmism, member of the Russian Society of Lovers of the World. The author of science fiction works, a supporter and propagandist of the idea of ​​space exploration using orbital stations, put forward the idea of ​​a space elevator. He believed that the development of life on one of the planets of the Universe would reach such power and perfection that it would make it possible to overcome the forces of gravity and spread life throughout the Universe.

Childhood and self-education K.E. Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 5, 1857, in the family of a Polish nobleman who served in the department of state property, in the village of Izhevskoye near Ryazan. He was baptized in St. Nicholas Church. The name Konstantin was completely new in the Tsiolkovsky family, it was given by the name of the priest who baptized the baby.

In Izhevsk, Konstantin had a chance to live for a very short time - the first three years of his life, and he had almost no memories of this period. Eduard Ignatievich (Konstantin's father) started having troubles in the service - the authorities were dissatisfied with his liberal attitude towards local peasants. In 1860, Konstantin's father received a transfer to Ryazan as a clerk of the Forest Department, and soon began to teach natural history in the land surveying and taxation classes of the Ryazan gymnasium and received the rank of titular adviser.

The mother was involved in the primary education of Tsiolkovsky and his brothers. It was she who taught Konstantin to read (moreover, his mother taught him only the alphabet, and how to add words from letters Tsiolkovsky guessed himself), write, introduced him to the basics of arithmetic.

At the age of 9, Tsiolkovsky, sledding in the winter, caught a cold and fell ill with scarlet fever. As a result of a complication after an illness, he lost his hearing. Then came what later Konstantin Eduardovich called "the saddest, darkest time of my life." At this time, Tsiolkovsky for the first time begins to show interest in craftsmanship.

In 1868 the Tsiolkovsky family moved to Vyatka. In 1869, together with his younger brother Ignatius, he entered the first class of the male Vyatka gymnasium. The study was given with great difficulty, there were many subjects, the teachers were strict. Deafness bothered me a lot. In the same year, sad news came from St. Petersburg - the elder brother Dmitry, who studied at the Naval College, died. This death shocked the whole family, but especially Maria Ivanovna. In 1870, Kostya's mother, whom he dearly loved, died unexpectedly. Grief crushed the orphaned boy. Even without that he did not shine with success in his studies, oppressed by the misfortunes that fell on him, Kostya studied worse and worse. Much more acutely did he feel his deafness, which made him more and more isolated. For pranks, he was repeatedly punished, ended up in a punishment cell.

In the second grade, Tsiolkovsky remained for the second year, and expulsion followed from the third. After that, Konstantin Eduardovich never studied anywhere - he studied exclusively on his own. Books become the boy's only friends. Unlike gymnasium teachers, books generously endow him with knowledge and never make the slightest reproach.

At the same time, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky joined the technical and scientific creativity. He independently made a home lathe, self-propelled carriages and locomotives. He was fond of tricks, thought about the project of a car with wings.

For the father, the abilities of his son become obvious, and he decides to send the boy to Moscow to continue his education. Every day from 10 am to 3-4 pm, the young man studies science in the Chertkovo public library - the only free library in Moscow at that time.

Work in the library was subject to a clear routine. In the morning, Konstantin was engaged in exact and natural sciences, which required concentration and clarity of mind. Then he switched to simpler material: fiction and journalism. He actively studied "thick" journals, where both review scientific articles and journalistic articles were published. He enthusiastically read Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, admired the articles of Dmitry Pisarev: “Pisarev made me tremble with joy and happiness. In him I saw then my second “I”. During the first year of his life in Moscow, Tsiolkovsky studied physics and the principles of mathematics. In 1874, the Chertkovo Library moved to the building of the Rumyantsev Museum. In the new reading room Konstantin studies differential and integral calculus, higher algebra, analytic and spherical geometry. Then astronomy, mechanics, chemistry. For three years, Konstantin fully mastered the gymnasium program, as well as a significant part of the university one. Unfortunately, his father was no longer able to pay for his accommodation in Moscow, and besides, he felt unwell and was going to retire. With the knowledge gained, Konstantin could well begin independent work in the provinces, as well as continue his education outside of Moscow. In the autumn of 1876, Eduard Ignatievich called his son back to Vyatka, and Konstantin returned home.

Konstantin returned to Vyatka weakened, emaciated and emaciated. Difficult living conditions in Moscow, hard work also led to a deterioration in vision. After returning home, Tsiolkovsky began to wear glasses. Having regained his strength, Konstantin began to give private lessons in physics and mathematics. I learned my first lesson through my father's connections in a liberal society. Having shown himself to be a talented teacher, in the future he had no shortage of students. When teaching lessons, Tsiolkovsky used his own original methods, the main of which was a visual demonstration - Konstantin made paper models of polyhedra for geometry lessons, together with his students conducted numerous experiments in physics lessons, which earned him the fame of a teacher who explains the material well and clearly in classes with who are always interested. He spent all his free time in it or in the library. I read a lot - special literature, fiction, journalism. According to his autobiography, at that time he read The Beginnings by Isaac Newton, whose scientific views Tsiolkovsky adhered to throughout his later life.

At the end of 1876, Konstantin's younger brother Ignatius died. The brothers were very close from childhood, Konstantin trusted Ignatius with his innermost thoughts, and the death of his brother was a heavy blow. By 1877, Eduard Ignatievich was already very weak and ill, the tragic death of his wife and children had an effect (except for the sons of Dmitry and Ignatius, during these years the Tsiolkovskys lost their youngest daughter, Ekaterina, she died in 1875, during the absence of Konstantin), head family retired. In 1878 the entire Tsiolkovsky family returned to Ryazan.

On September 17, 1857, a man was born in the Ryazan province, without whom it is impossible to imagine astronautics. This is Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, a self-taught scientist who substantiated the idea that rockets should be used for space flights.
He sincerely believed that humanity would reach such a level of development that it would be able to populate the expanses of the universe.

Tsiolkovsky - nobleman

Tsiolkovsky suffered from deafness since childhood.

Scientist not educated

Tsiolkovsky was a teacher by profession

Colleagues at first did not understand Tsiolkovsky

Tsiolkovsky was the first to know what it was like to be on the moon

On May 15, 1915, the sky over London turned dark. An armada of giant German airships - zeppelins - covered the city and bombed London's East End waterfront. It was the first air attack in the history of mankind.

Despite the fact that the bombs dropped from clumsy "heavenly cigars" managed to destroy only a couple of buildings and send only seven careless port workers to their forefathers, no one in England could sleep peacefully anymore. The sky of the First World War briefly but very convincingly became German. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin - the inventor of air monsters - was honored in Berlin as an Olympic god. And the words "zeppelin" and "airship" have forever become synonymous. And until now, almost no one knows that the real father of metal airships was a provincial and almost deaf math teacher from pre-revolutionary Kaluga - Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.

Why does an airship need a collar?

In 1887, Tsiolkovsky briefly came from Kaluga to Moscow to speak at the Society of Naturalists with a scientific report on the possibility of creating a large all-metal airship (by the way, he began work on a balloon back in 1885). Tsiolkovsky is only 30 years old, and he is full of ideas that seem crazy to the peaceful inhabitants of Kaluga. However, they are not the only ones expressively twirling a finger at their temples, having heard the reasoning that a healthy metal contraption can easily be lifted into the sky. And not just raise it, but make it manageable! Pundits also listened to the crazy provincial with sour smiles, and ... did not even allocate money to build a model. Like, of course, you all came up with the right idea, my friend Konstantin Eduardovich, but come back - better to your native Kaluga and continue to teach the kids the multiplication table.

But Tsiolkovsky did not even think of giving up. This was not the first and not the last kick that he received from fate, so he had excellent immunity to failure. A few years before that, for example, he independently developed the kinetic theory of gases, having no idea that 24 years ago this very theory was discovered and brought to mind by other scientists. The blow was, of course, terrible, but despite the fact that the discovery was rather late, Tsiolkovsky was elected a member of the physicochemical society. The physiologist Secheno and the chemist Mendeleev drew attention to his manuscript. It was to Mendeleev that Tsiolkovsky turned with a request to at least somehow attach an all-metal airship.

In 1890, Mendeleev handed over the drawings of the young Kaluga inventor to the VII Aeronautical Department of the Russian Technical Society. It must be said that not only scientists but also the military, whom God himself ordered to become interested in a promising project, sat there. But, alas, Tsiolkovsky was ridiculed and refused with the wording: "The balloon must forever remain a toy of the winds by the power of things." Tsiolkovsky did not break down this time either: he published several works on airship building and even the book “Metal Balloon, Controlled”. All in vain.

In 1895, 10 years after Tsiolkovsky in Germany, the military and the government vigorously supported the developments of the German officer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and began large-scale work to create a controlled metal airship. The impressed Kaiser called Zeppelin "the most outstanding German of the 20th century." The fact that for the first time the idea of ​​​​creating such an aerostat was expressed by Tsiolkovsky, no one remembered. Including the Zeppelin himself.

airship truth

Zeppelins von Zeppelin were airships with a metal frame. Tsiolkovsky furnished the count not only in time, but also in design. His balloon was conceived as all-metal, without any frame. The airship was provided with the necessary rigidity by gas pressure and a corrugated metal shell. It's funny that Tsiolkovsky developed the shirring method, get as a gift a machine that pleated ladies' collars. It is even more amusing that in aviation this method began to be applied only after 30 years. And it is quite surprising that, while fiddling with his airship, Tsiolkovsky casually developed technological methods for welding thin sheets of metal, the design of gas-permeable hinged joints, and a method for hydrostatic testing the strength of the airship shell. All this is still used in aviation and shipbuilding.

Genius among people

Our hero was born on September 17, 1857 in the village of Izhevsk, Ryazan province, in the family of Eduard Ignatievich Tsiolkovsky, a Polish nobleman. The family, it must be said, was gigantic: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had ten brothers and two sisters. The earnings of his father, who served in the Forest Department, were barely enough to make ends meet. My father was a cold, reserved, harsh man. The mother, Maria Ivanovna Yumasheva, was busy with the children, a sweet, cheerful woman, in whose veins a cocktail of Russian-Tatar blood, common in our latitudes, seethed. It was his mother who gave Tsiolkovsky his first home education.

The future father of astronautics grew up as a normal boy: he ran around with his peers around, swam, climbed trees, built huts. The frenzied love of childhood is kites, Tsiolkovsky made them with his own hands. Having launched another creation into the sky, Tsiolkovsky sent “mail” to the sky along a thread - a matchbox with a cockroach stunned by what was happening.

I must say that experiments with cockroaches will become a good tradition. In 1879, 22-year-old Tsiolkovsky built the world's first (and he very often did something for the first time in the world) centrifugal machine, the great-grandmother of modern centrifuges. “The entire red cockroach was increased by 300 times, and the weight of the chicken by 10, without the slightest harm to them,” the novice scientist cheerfully reported in his diary. The comments of the cockroach and the chicken have not been preserved. It's a pity.

Everything promised to be happy and cloudless, but at the age of 10 Tsiolkovsky fell ill with scarlet fever and became almost deaf. His hearing never recovered. A year later, his mother died. All this together became a real tragedy: the world of Tsiolkovsky changed immediately and forever. Formerly a lively and cheerful boy became gloomy and withdrawn.

In 1871, the father was forced to take his son from the gymnasium: deafness did not allow Tsiolkovsky to learn the program, and for evil pranks he did not climb out of the punishment cell. More Tsiolkovsky did not study in any educational institution - nowhere and never. Once alone with the silent world and bookshelves, he became self-taught - perhaps the most outstanding in the world. “At the age of 14,” writes Tsiolkovsky in his autobiography, “I decided to read arithmetic, and it seemed to me that everything was completely clear and understandable.” After another 3 years, he also independently mastered physics, differential and integral calculus, higher algebra, analytical and spherical geometry.

Tsiolkovsky constantly made all sorts of rubbish: toys, machine tools, devices. He even managed to build wings on which he tried to rise into the sky and, of course, almost broke his neck. And he also made toy locomotives with his own hands, moreover, he made them of steel frames for ladies' crinolines, which at that time completely went out of fashion and were sold for pennies on the market.

Meanwhile, the Tsiolkovsky family (the father constantly changed jobs, trying to feed a horde of children) takes root in Vyatka. The obvious abilities of a deaf provincial boy that do not climb into any gates confuse even his relatives. Finally, in 1873, the father decides and sends his son to Moscow - to enter a technical school.

However, nothing happened with the admission - either deafness interfered again, or Tsiolkovsky simply did not want to be distracted from independent studies. The fact that he lived in Moscow for 2 years, sitting all day in the reading room. The father sent his son 10-15 rubles a month, which Tsiolkovsky almost completely spent on the purchase of reagents and materials for experiments. He did not cut his hair (“Once upon a time”), walked in a tattered dress, obviously, he was starving - but it was during these years that he conceived everything that would later become the main meaning of his life, and at the same time be ahead of modern science by tens or even hundreds of years . Space rockets, overcoming gravity and space exploration - this is what a seventeen-year-old boy raved about, walking along the night Moscow streets.

"I was a passionate teacher"

However, the feast of the spirit did not last long. Tsiolkovsky had to return to Vyatka: his aged father retired and could no longer feed the overage genius. Tsiolkovsky, in order to somehow earn some money, began to give private lessons and unexpectedly discovered in himself remarkable pedagogical abilities. In 1880, he externally passed the exam for the title of teacher and moved to the town of Borovsk, getting a job as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry in the county school. Then, in 1880, he finally decided to devote all his free time to science. He got married specifically for this.

Here we have to make a lyrical digression and talk a little about women. As you know, geniuses are distinguished either by exceptional lust, or by Olympian indifference to any call of the flesh. Deaf and, frankly, not very attractive Tsiolkovsky (and, besides, he openly neglected the rules of personal hygiene), belonged to the first category. Girls and ladies excited him excessively. Being a respectable old man, whitened with gray hairs, he repeatedly admitted that he was always distinguished by exceptional voluptuousness, which, however, he kept in a severe bridle. Once it came to the unheard of: twenty-year-old Tsiolkovsky, stupefied by lofty thoughts and prolonged abstinence, managed to seriously fall in love with a ten-year-old girl and suffered for a long time. Fortunately, the innocent child was taken somewhere for permanent residence by unsuspecting parents. But Tsiolkovsky, who managed to pluck a slobbery kiss from the mouth of the young charmer in parting, realized that things were bad. So it won't be long to rattle in hard labor.

And Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky decided to marry at least with someone. He approached the matter seriously, in a scientific way, deciding to marry a girl who would be physically unattractive to him, so as not to waste time and creative energy on all kinds of love. Exceptionally healthy scheduled sex. The choice fell on Varenka Sokolova, the daughter of a Borovo priest, from whom Tsiolkovsky rented a room. Varenka was an ugly dowry who understood absolutely nothing about outer space and all-metal monoplanes. but on the other hand, she became Tsiolkovsky's faithful friend, lived with him for a long time. poor and difficult life. meekly resigning himself to the oddities of his great husband and enduring the endless ridicule of those around him.

Varenka unconditionally accepted her husband's harsh conditions: no guests in the house, no relatives, guests and gatherings. not the slightest noise or fuss that could interfere with his studies. Tsiolkovsky even settled his wife in a separate room, through the front door from his own, so as not to distract him in vain for marital duty. However, the senets turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle: a year after the wedding, a daughter was born, followed by six children. Tsiolkovsky's plan to combat unspiritual lust failed completely.

Children - his own - he did not like. At home, everyone walked along the line, afraid even to utter a word. Despite the deafness, Tsiolkovsky could not stand any noise, so the children did not dare to move once again. At the same time, surprisingly, Tsiolkovsky adored schoolchildren, he was an excellent teacher and spent hours patiently fiddling with other people's children, while his own children sat at home stuffed and in rags.

As for the wraps, no jokes. The Tsiolkovsky family always lived in dire need, despite the fact that a school teacher earned about 100 rubles a month (for comparison: a highly qualified worker then received 12 rubles a month). However, most of the salary went to experiments and models. Let's be honest: Tsiolkovsky was well aware that he was a genius, he was proud of this and did not spare money for science and his own needs. He ordered parts and reagents by mail, built expensive models, published manuscripts at his own expense and bought - even before the revolution - one of the first cameras in the country (about the same as getting your own subway train now). What is there! Tsiolkovsky silently paid off 50 rubles for a bicycle on which he took long walks in order to improve his failing health.

In terms of health, it wasn't very good. Teaching took a lot of time and even more energy. In order to have time to do research, Tsiolkovsky got up after dark and went to bed far after midnight. Everything in the house was subject to a strict routine. For the first time, Tsiolkovsky thought that not all of his orders benefited the family in 1902, when one of his sons committed suicide. A few years later, the second son also passed away. But Tsiolkovsky could no longer change the established order of things. The family has been an unbearable burden for him all his life. Varenka, aged and ugly, counted the coppers and put up with it. Silently. It is unlikely that she understood that Tsiolkovsky was a genius. But he was her husband.

In 1892, Tsiolkovsky was transferred to Kaluga - again to the county, that is, to the elementary school. But in Kaluga, a talented teacher with scientific works and excellent recommendations was quickly noticed: he received an offer to become a teacher of physics and mathematics at a diocesan school. Tsiolkovsky worked there for 20 years and, in his own words, was proud and happy about it.

The reason for happiness lay not only in the opportunity to demonstrate experiments with an ebonite stick. The fact is that the daughters of clergymen studied at the school - marvelous priests, rich, flowering charms, all with charming dimples, which they now prefer to call cellulite. It is clear that such an audience greatly inspired Tsiolkovsky. Nothing that the townsfolk made fun of him, nothing, that the scientific world did not put him a penny. But with what delight the eyes of his God-fearing disciples burned! And Tsiolkovsky went to write to the whole province.

Citizen and ball

Tsiolkovsky invented and predicted a grandiose bunch of things in various fields of human knowledge. Most of his predictions still look like science fiction. However, it was from the works of Tsiolkovsky that science fiction turned into a scientific forecast. Yuri Gagarin, returning from space, said: "I have already read about all this from Tsiolkovsky." By the way, no jokes: everything coincides, up to the most detailed description of the astronauts' spacewalk.

In 1894, Tsiolkovsky substantiated (with drawings and technical calculations) the idea of ​​​​building an all-metal monoplane with a cantilever wing. Scientists around the world at that time fought over the creation of aircraft with flapping wings. Tsiolkovsky's airplane looks like a frozen soaring bird with thick curved and motionless wings. In addition, the inventor emphasizes that in order to obtain high speeds, it is necessary to improve the streamlining of the aircraft.

In 1883 Tsiolkovsky - again for the first time in the world! - writes that space will be conquered by rockets. By 1896, he creates a stable theory of jet propulsion. His work "Research of world spaces by rocket devices" became the basis of modern astronautics and rocket science. Tsiolkovsky solves the practical problem of rectilinear rocket motion, develops the theory of multi-stage rockets and the theory of the motion of bodies of variable mass, describes how to land a spacecraft on the surface of planets devoid of an atmosphere, and at the same time determines the second cosmic velocity.

On May 10, 1897, a recluse from Kaluga deduced a formula that established the relationship between the speed of a rocket and its mass. The Tsiolkovsky formula formed the basis of modern rocket science. He was the first to talk about the rocket as an artificial satellite of the earth, about the possibility of creating near-Earth stations that would become intermediate bases for humanity during space exploration. Tsiolkovsky even developed a way to grow plants on rockets that were supposed to deliver astronauts to other galaxies. It’s scary to talk about his practical developments: everything is here, starting with graphite gas rudders for rocket control and ending with oxidizers for rocket fuel.

But most importantly, Tsiolkovsky was seriously convinced that over time, humanity will settle throughout the cosmos. And it will not just settle down - it will fundamentally change its essence. Evolution, in his understanding, was to follow the path of spiritual perfection, and the end point would be the transformation of each individual into a kind of luminous spiritual ball. Now let's stretch our imagination: the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century, the very outskirts of Kaluga, chickens, geese, goats walk along the grassy streets. Even cabs don't come here, because the mountain is too steep. And at the table in the attic sits a man who writes: "We live more the life of the cosmos than the life of the Earth." No wonder he was considered completely crazy.

National Treasure

Most likely, Tsiolkovsky would not have noticed the revolution and the civil war, but a strange-looking uncle in stupid glasses was grabbed on the street by vigilant Chekists (since the beard and glasses are like a Social Revolutionary). And they were quickly taken to Moscow to the Lubyanka. "Do you even know who you're talking to? he asked the investigator, who had gone berserk from insomnia, alcohol and cocaine. - Humanity is unlikely to be able to understand me in 300 years, and I'm wasting time on your nonsense! Tsiolkovsky, contrary to revolutionary logic, was not just released, he was surrounded by care.

The Soviet government gave the scientist a pension (half a million rubles at face value in 1921) and caressed him in every possible way. The phrase "jet engines" no longer seemed stupid or funny to anyone. The USSR was torn into the sky and space - to build communism. Tsiolkovsky was elevated to the rank of treasure of the nation. Young Korolyov and a flock of aspiring scientists have just not prayed to the great old man. However, the airship - the dream of a lifetime he was not allowed to build. In return, the Motherland increased the scientist's pension and presented a spacious house on the street, which was immediately given the name of Tsiolkovsky.

The people of Kaluga realized that the deaf moron, whom they had been making fun of for twenty years, was indeed a big shot! Unfortunately, Tsiolkovsky was no longer young. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer too late. A council that arrived from Moscow performed a half-hour operation under local anesthesia. In fact, the doctors cut open Tsiolkovsky's stomach and shrugged with regret. It was a verdict.

Tsiolkovsky was buried in one of his favorite places - in the city park. On November 24, 1936, an obelisk was erected over the grave. One of their great-grandchildren, Sergei Soburov, works in a star city, provides communication between astronauts and the Earth. They did not take him to the cosmonaut corps - too much competition. But Saburov hopes that one of Tsiolkovsky's descendants will certainly fly into space. Even if it is in the form of a glowing ball.

Disputes about the role of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the development of world science do not subside. Someone considers him insane, a dropout and a plagiarist, someone considers him a brilliant scientist, a Russian da Vinci.

Tsiolkovsky was self-taught. Ever since his school days, he had serious hearing problems, which is why little Kostya experienced alienation from his peers and more and more went into books that were his best friends. In fact, cut off from the scientific environment, Tsiolkovsky made most of his discoveries on an intuitive level. In 1893, Tsiolkovsky's story "On the Moon" was published in the magazine "Around the World". In it, the scientist anticipated those physical phenomena that people will be able to prove almost a century later. Tsiolkovsky, with the help of thought, seemed to have visited the satellite of the Earth. The story is short, highly recommended reading.

Tsiolkovsky was not religious. His wife's parents agreed to have an atheist son-in-law only because their daughter was a dowry. Tsiolkovsky's attitude to Orthodoxy was special. His daughter recalled: “He considered churches to be decorations of cities and monuments of antiquity. Father listened to the ringing of bells like music and liked to walk around the city during the vigil. He treated Christ as a great humanist and a person of genius who foresaw intuitively the truths, which scientists later approached through science.

Such, for example, is Christ's dictum: "There are many mansions in my father's house." Tsiolkovsky saw in this saying of Christ the idea of ​​numerous inhabited worlds. Tsiolkovsky placed Christ unattainably high in regard to ethics. His death for an idea, his grief for humanity, his ability to understand everything, to forgive everything, drove him into ecstasy. But with the same enthusiasm he treated the selfless workers of science, who saved mankind from death, disease, inventors, who facilitated human labor. He believed in higher perfect beings living on planets older than our earth, but he thought of them as beings consisting of the same matter as the entire cosmos, which, according to his concept, was governed by laws common to the entire universe. .

Tsiolkovsky's careless statements about Christ once almost cost him his teacher's place. Tsiolkovsky had to spend a lot of money to go to Kaluga and explain himself to his superiors.

Airship

One of the main deeds of Tsiolkovsky's life was the all-metal airship he designed. Balloons of that time were not only unreliable, but also unsafe. Tsiolkovsky's airship favorably differed from them in several characteristics at once.

Firstly, the volume of the shell was variable, which made it possible to maintain a constant lifting force at different flight altitudes and temperatures of the atmospheric air surrounding the airship. This possibility was achieved due to corrugated sidewalls and a special tightening system. Secondly, Tsiolkovsky left the use of explosive hydrogen, his airship was filled with hot air. The height of the airship could be adjusted using a separately developed heating system. The air was heated by passing the exhaust gases of the motors through the coils.

Thirdly, the thin metal shell was also corrugated, which made it possible to increase its strength and stability. Tsiolkovsky repeatedly applied for financial assistance to build an airship, but he was constantly refused. He independently, at his own expense, made several models of airships, working and controlled.

Eugenics

Tsiolkovsky is reproached for extremely sharp views on humanity and is even called the ideologist of Russian fascism. Indeed, the views of the scientist on human progress sin undeniably subjective.

Here, for example, is one of Tsiolkovsky's statements: “Everyone should strive to ensure that there are no imperfect beings, for example, rapists, cripples, sick, feeble-minded, unconscious, etc. They should be exceptionally cared for, but they should not produce offspring. So painlessly they fade away. There should not be unconscious animals in the world, but they should not be killed either, but by isolating the sexes or in other ways stopping their reproduction. Now the inhabitants of the northern countries cannot do without domestic animals, but in time, when everyone will receive the right to 4 acres of land in a warm climate, not only wild, but also domestic animals will be superfluous.

Tsiolkovsky dreamed of an ideal human society and expressed radical views. So, he proposed to destroy criminals, splitting them into atoms, and also adhered to the idea of ​​a caste structure of society. In the future, the scientist believed, society will turn into ray energy. Some interpreters of Tsiolkovsky's writings consider this idea to be an intuition about the era of the Internet.

Discoveries

Despite the fact that most of the discoveries were made by Tsiolkovsky intuitively, their number is amazing. They proposed: gas rudders (made of graphite) to control the flight of the rocket and change the trajectory of its center of mass; the use of propellant components for cooling the outer shell of the spacecraft (during entry into the Earth's atmosphere), the walls of the combustion chamber and the nozzle; pumping system for supplying fuel components.

In the field of rocket propellants, Tsiolkovsky investigated a large number of different oxidizers and fuels; recommended fuel vapors: liquid oxygen with hydrogen, oxygen with hydrocarbons. Tsiolkovsky worked hard and fruitfully on the creation of a theory of the flight of jet aircraft, invented his own scheme of a gas turbine engine. The merits of Tsiolkovsky were highly appreciated not only by domestic scientists, but also by the creator of the first rockets, Wernher von Braun.

Such a hectic activity. developed by Tsiolkovsky could not do without mistakes. So, due to isolation from the scientific world, he rediscovered the kinetic theory of gases, sending it to Mendeleev, to which he replied in bewilderment: the kinetic theory of gases was discovered 25 years ago.

in 1893, Tsiolkovsky published the work "Gravity as a source of world energy", where, using the erroneous theory of compression developed by Helmholtz (1853) and Kelvin ("Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism"), he tried to calculate the age of the Sun, determining the age of the star at 12 million years and predicting that in 7.5 million years the Sun will go out, since its density will reach the density of the planet (Earth). Modern science puts the age of the Sun at 4.59 billion years, saying it will shine and support life on Earth for at least another 1 billion years.

Tsiolkovsky did not accept Einstein's theory of relativity, saying that pointing to the limitedness of the Universe and the limited speed in the Universe by the speed of light is the same as limiting the creation of the world to six days. Tsiolkovsky also rejected the idea of ​​the relativity of time: “The slowdown of time in ships flying at subluminal speed compared to earth time is either a fantasy or one of the regular mistakes of a non-philosophical mind. … Time slowdown! Understand what wild nonsense lies in these words!

High contempt

Tsiolkovsky was one of those people who devoted himself entirely to science. He even married not for love, but only with the expectation that his wife would not interfere with his work. His relations with those around him did not develop in the best way, he had almost no friends, but there were students. Tsiolkovsky devoted 42 years of his life to teaching practice. According to the memoirs, the scientist was not a passionate speaker, but he managed to interest the audience, the students loved him, which cannot be said about the neighbors. Many took Tsiolkovsky for a madman, which, however, did not particularly worry him. Still, the theory of eugenics he developed provided answers to many questions and claims.

Here is one of the opinions about Tsiolkovsky: “This Kaluga aborigine,” some said, “a man out of his mind, a semi-literate ignoramus, a teacher of arithmetic for dioceses, that is, for priestly daughters (what a shameful position!), Understanding nothing in science, takes on the solution of unsolvable problems over which the minds of famous professors struggled. This, so to speak, teacher of the preparatory class sticks his nose in areas to which he has absolutely nothing to do - in higher mathematics and astronomy! Why, this is for chickens to laugh at! ”