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Konstantin Eduardovich
Tsiolkovsky
(1857-1935) Rendered virtually deaf
by illness, Tsiolkovsky was forced to
leave school at the age of ten. Nevertheless,
he continued to teach himself
and went on to study physics, astronomy,
mechanics and geometry.
He started out by teaching mathematics
and physics in his hometown.
The tales of Jules Verne prompted
Tsiolkovsky to write his own stories
about inter-planetary travel, and he
developed into a writer of theoretical
discourses. And from about 1885 onwards
he began work on his reflections
and observations concerning
the realization of space flight. In
1886, Tsiolkovsky published the paper
“Theoria Aerostatika”, followed
in 1892 by the theory of a fully-metal
airship (Aerostat Metallitscheski).
By 1935 he had published a total
of 35 books, articles and papers on
the subject of aeronautics. The peak
of his work came in 1903 with the
rocket equation, published in 1903 in
a specialist Russian paper under the
title “Investigations into outer space
using chemical reactors”.
Innovation 16, Carl Zeiss AG, 2005
Robert Hutchings
Goddard
(1882-1945) was an early thinker
about space flights to the moon and
Mars, but was for a long time regarded
as a fantasist. He enjoyed considerably
greater success in the field of
rocket development. As early as 1918
he developed military solid rockets.
From 1920 onwards he was engaged
in the development of liquid-propellant
rockets. For the purposes of flight
stabilization Goddard designed a control
jet deflector which was steered
with the aid of a gyroscope. In 1935
he launched a rocket that was the
first to fly at supersonic speed.
The ESA (European Space Agency) is the space
organization of the Europeans. Founded in 1975 to
improve coordination of European space operations,
it has its headquarters in Paris. The ESA is financed
from the budgets of member states.
www.esa.int
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