Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Theorist of spaceflight; the rocket equation
Timeline - Tsiolkovsky in the record
4 entries from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive, 3 of them events in Tsiolkovsky's own life.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is born in a village in Ryazan Governorate. Scarlet fever at ten leaves him nearly deaf, cutting him off from ordinary schooling and driving him to self-education.
After years reading alone in Moscow libraries, Tsiolkovsky passes his exams and becomes a provincial teacher of arithmetic and geometry in Borovsk and later Kaluga, the setting of a lifetime of solitary calculation.
In the same year the Wright Flyer leaves the ground at Kitty Hawk, a deaf Russian schoolteacher publishes 'The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices', deriving the fundamental equation of rocket flight.
Tsiolkovsky writes the line most often quoted from his work; in a 1912 article it runs 'The planet is the cradle of reason, but one cannot live forever in a cradle'. His writings frame space as human destiny.
The research file for this dossier holds 7 verified source entries, 7 of them distinct works. The sources page lists every one of them with what it covers, how it was reached, and the sharpest point at which this page and its sources come apart.