Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky
(1857–1935)

Father of Russian cosmonautics. Rocket velocity formula, multi-stage design, liquid fuel — calculations that a generation of engineers who built the Soviet space programme began with: Tsander, Glushko, Korolev.

Tsiolkovsky is the central figure of the natural-scientific wing of Russian cosmism. His connection with this movement was not limited to rocket engineering: he combined engineering calculation — formulas, drawings, projects — with his own philosophy about humanity's place in the Universe. And he subordinated the first to the second: for him, the rocket was not a goal but a means to carry life beyond the boundaries of the planet.

He received his self-education at the Chertkov Library in Moscow, where books were selected for him by its employee — Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. Later, Tsiolkovsky acknowledged that Fyodorov had replaced university professors for him there.

Tsiolkovsky's most famous phrase is usually quoted as 'The Earth is humanity's cradle, but we cannot live in a cradle forever.' In the original, it sounds different: 'The planet is the cradle of reason, but we cannot live in a cradle forever'; the familiar version emerged later. Next to it stands a second phrase, from a letter to the editor of the 'Herald of Aeronautics' — 'Humanity will not remain on Earth forever…'

Space exploration can easily be read as an instrument of the 'Common Task': if we are to resettle — including resurrected generations — we need both space and a means to get there. The logic fits, and Tsiolkovsky is rightly called a successor of Fyodorov. But his own motives were different: the inexhaustible energy of the Sun and space itself, the growth and perfection of life, the elimination of suffering.

Tsiolkovsky published his philosophical pamphlets in Kaluga at his own expense, one after another. He called his doctrine monism and panpsychism: 'I am not only a materialist, but also a panpsychist who acknowledges the sentience of the entire Universe.'

And a caveat without which the picture is false: he was not a resurrectionist in the Fyodorovian sense — he had the immortality of the atom-spirit and panpsychism, and in his 'cosmic ethics' there are parts that modern humanistic texts will not cite.