Space Scientists and their contribution to space exploration
Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17, 1857, in the village of Ijevskoe, Ryasan Province, Russia. He could not attend school after the age of 10 as he lost his hearing which resulted from scarlet fever. He educated himself by reading books and was determined to prove he was as or more intelligent than others even with his disability.
In 1873-1876 he lived in Moscow where he spent a lot of time in the main Moscow libraries, among them the well known Pashkov House Library. While in Moscow, Tsiolkovsky was tutored by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorovitch Fedorov. It is here, in Moscow, at age 17 that he first dreamed about space travel. He was inspired by the novels of Jules Verne. He started to think about the problems of space vehicle design. His thoughts were not simply to go into outer space, but to live in space, for humanity to become a space civilization.
In 1880-1892 Tsiolkovsky lived in Borovsk and worked as a mathematics teacher. At that time he began his scientific research into air balloon building, life in free space, aerodynamics and philosophy.
In 1892-1935 he moved to Kaluga. It was here in Kaluga that he became a well known scientist, and where he wrote and published his theories of space flight and inter-planetary travels. He wrote his Cosmic Philosophy, and he dreamed about the far distant future of humanity, including the final conquest of space and leaving the limits of the planet Earth for the stars. He was also made a member of the Soviet Academy of Science in 1919.
Later, he proved mathematically the possibility of space flight, and wrote and published over 500 works about space travel and related subjects. These included the design and construction of space rockets, steer able rocket engines, multi-stage boosters, space stations, life in space, and more. He made many sketches of liquid-fueled rockets, detailed combustion chamber designs with steering vanes in the exhaust plume for directional control, double walled pressurized cabins to for protection against meteorites, gyroscopes for attitude control, reclining seats to protect occupants from high G loads at launch, air locks for exiting the spaceship into the vacuum of space, and other incredibly accurate predictions of space travel. He theorised many of his ideas about space travel even before the first airplane flight took place which shows how far ahead he was with his ideas. He determined correctly that the escape velocity from the Earth into orbit was 8 km/second, and that this could be achieved by using a multi-stage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. He predicted the use of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen or liquid oxygen and kerosene for propulsion, spinning space stations for artificial gravity, mining asteroids for materials, space suits, the problems of eating, drinking, and sleeping in weightlessness, and even closed cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.
Tsiolkovsky was not only interested in the engineering needed to make space travel possible, but also took interest in the philosophy of space. His main idea was to achieve ?happiness? not only for humanity, but also for all the living beings in the Universe. He believed that human occupation of space was inevitable and would push forward human evolution.
1n 1926 Tsiolkovsky defined sixteen steps for human expansion into space as part of his “Plan of Space Exploration”. These are:
Creation of rocket airplanes with wings
Progressively increasing the speed and altitude of these airplanes
Production of real rockets-without wings
Ability to land on the surface of the sea
Reaching escape velocity (about 8 Km/second), and the first flight into Earth orbit
Lengthening rocket flight times in space
Experimental use of plants to make an artificial atmosphere in spaceships
Using pressurized space suits for activity outside of spaceships
Making orbiting greenhouses for plants
Constructing large orbital habitats around the Earth
Using solar radiation to grow food, to heat space quarters, and for transport throughout the Solar System
Colonization of the asteroid belt
Colonization of the entire Solar System and beyond
Achievement of individual and social perfection
Overcrowding of the Solar System and the colonization of the Milky Way
The Sun begins to die and the people remaining in the Solar System’s population go to other suns
Tsiolkovsky lived to see a younger generation of Russian engineers and scientists begin to make his futuristic concepts reality. Among these was Sergey Korolev, who would become the “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program, who launched humanity into space with Sputnik, Laika, and the launch of the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, who now is considered to be the father of cosmonautics and human space flight, died in Kaluga at the age of 78 on September 19, 1935.
Goddard
Robert Hutchins Goddard (1882-1945) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. He was a college professor of physics who always had a particular interest in rocketry. Instead of just theorising and presenting his ideas as other had before him, Goddard actually tested them and conducted experiments. Arguably his most important achievement was building the world?s first liquid-fueled rocket and testing it. In doing this he solved many technical problems such as fuel valving for throttle, start and stop, fuel injection, engine cooling and ignition. Goddard developed the technique of having the liquid oxygen cool the combustion chamber on its way from the fuel tank. This method is still in use and therefore his investigations have definitely improved the knowledge of space travel.
Oberth
Hermann Julius Oberth (1894-1992) was born in Hermannstadt, Romania but later lived in Germany. His interest in rocketry began at age 11 when he, like many others, first read Jules Verne’s ?From The Earth To The Moon?. He studied Physics at the University of Munich after first studying Medicine and deciding it was not for him. One of his major achievements was to realise that the higher the ratio between propellant and rocket mass the faster the rocket would be able to travel. He also realised that there was a problem with this, that as the rocket expends fuel, its mass (not including fuel) remains the same and that it basically becomes heavier and heavier in relation to the engine?s ability to provide thrust. His solution to this was to break up the rocket cylinder into sections and as one section of the cylinder was expended and became deadweight then it would be jettisoned and therefore velocity would be added as the next one ignited. This technique is still used today. Now Oberth is considered as one of the three founding fathers of rocketry and modern astronautics along with Tsiolkovsky and Goddard.
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