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Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), the founder of astronauties in Russia, put forward several ideas about space travel. He worked out designs for spaceships. Tsiolkovsky's idea of a spaceship was based on the use of liquid fuels. His calculations were used in modern theory of cosmonautics and practical space travel.
Tsiolkovsky was born in 1857, in the small town of Yzhevsk, near Ryazan. When he was 10, he had scarlet fever, and lost his hearing. This had a great influence on his life.
When Tsiolkovsky was 15, he began to study elementary mathematics. It was then, that he first thought of constructing a large balloon with a metallic envelope. As his knowledge was not enough, he began to study higher mathematics.
The problem, at which he worked, was interplanetary travel. Though Tsiolkovsky soon began a long career as a teacher of mathematics, man's penetration into space remained his life - long study.
In 1883, he noted that the rocket would be the only manmade instrument able to reach space. The prediction was published only in 1954, when his collected works were published by the Academy of Sciences.
The mathematical terms of space travel were worked out by Tsiolkovsky as early as 1895, in a manuscript «The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Reaction-Propelled Apparatus». When it was published in 1911, Tsiolkovsky won immediate international recognition, especially among the pioneers of aviation science.
To get money for his research, Tsiolkovsky tried to publish his book «Outside the Earth», in which he described the imaginary flight of a manned rocket ship in orbit around the earth. It was only in 1920 that the book was published, and it fired the imagination of many scientists both in Russia and abroad. In this book, Tsiolkovsky assembled a group of famous scientists in an imaginary mountain laboratory; Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Helnhols, Franklin, and a modest Russian named Ivanov. At their disposal is an army of the world's best engineers and technicians. The year is 2017.
Professor Herman Obert, a German scientist, wrote to Tsiolkovsky, "You kindled this fire. We shall not let it die. It is necessary that man's greatest dream should be realized".
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