Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry

Chapter 1. Beginnings, Teaching Science in a Provincial Context: Tsiolkovskii’s Years in the Russian Locale, 1857–1917

1 BEGINNINGS, TEACHING SCIENCE IN A PROVINCIAL CONTEXT TSIOLKOVSKII’S YEARS IN THE RUSSIAN LOCALE, 1857–1917 Konstantin E.Tsiolkovskii was born on September 17, 1857, in the Russian village of Izhevskoye, Spassky District, in Riazanskaia Province. His mother, Maria Ivanova Yumasheva, was a Russian of Tatar background, and known to be intelligent and hard working, and his father, Eduard Tsiolkovskii (1820–80), a Pole from Lithuania, had been a forest ranger by trade since 1846. His mother stretched her husband’s meager salary to feed and clothe her family in the best possible manner. However, her husband was discharged from his position in approximately 1867 and became a clerk in Riazan. It was rumored that his father was fired because of his antitsarist sentiment and his controversial politics. However, later in his life, EduardTsiolkovskii became a respected teacher and then a government official, so he probably never harbored the radical tendencies of other leftist, provincial intellectuals of his time.1 The family moved in 1867 to Viatka, where young Konstantin became fond of the Viatka River. He was a lively child and was nicknamed by his mother with the Russian diminutive ptitsa (little bird). Later the next winter, in 1868, at approximately ten years old, Tsiolkovskii contracted scarlet fever. He had adored going ice-skating on the Viatka River and local ponds, but fell in one day and caught a terrible cold that led to scarlet fever. He became very ill and almost lost his hearing. His doting mother desperately tried to help the boy continue his studies, enrolling him in the Viatka Gymnasium ; however, his three years of classroom study between 1867 and 1870 were very difficult. His deafness, unfortunately, became a serious impediment to finishing classroom and institutional studies. At the age of thirteen, in 1870, his mother died, and he shortly thereafter dropped out of high school.2 16 chapter 1 In his diary, Tsiolkovskii described the period from 1868 to 1871 as a very sad and dark period in his lifetime: “I often became and behaved awkwardly among other children my age, and among people in general. My deafness, due to my scarlet fever, compelled me however to read and daydream endlessly. I felt isolated, even humiliated as an outcast from society.This caused me to withdraw deep within myself, to pursue great goals so as to deserve the approval and respect of others and not be despised by my peers.”3 His personal tragedy seemed to have made Tsiolkovskii more introverted and interested in proving himself as an inventor and an abstract thinker to the larger scientific community in the established institutions of Moscow and St. Petersburg. He believed his past studies “were like a dark cloud,” and that in the future he would have to become self-motivated, driven, and a self-taught scientist.4 For the next four to six years, Tsiolkovskii continued to have medical troubles that forced him to teach himself scientific principles at home. From an early age, he became very adept at making scientific models of machines and showed a great interest in outer space and science fiction. He considered himself very proficient in mathematics, chemistry, physics, and mechanics. He even occasionally tutored local schoolchildren in these subjects to bring in money for his family. After 1870, since he was no longer able to attend school, he studied first with his brother’s textbooks, and then from his father’s personal home science library. At age fourteen, he described in his diary how he became interested in physics and inventions and tried to construct his first aerostat out of paper.5 In 1873, at the young age of sixteen,Tsiolkovskii came to Moscow, where his father had sent him to study independently in the hope of possibly entering technical school. He knew no one in the old capital city, was dressed poorly, and was confused by his first impressions of this metropolis.Tsiolkovskii’s reminiscences remind us of his contemporaries who also kept diary accounts of their first impressions of Moscow. Semen I. Kanatchikov, whose famous memoir documents his travels from a peasant village to urban Moscow, also reflected on his ambivalence toward the new city, beginnings, teaching science in a provincial context 17 both awesome and exciting as well as overwhelming, if not depressing.6 Tsiolkovskii’s father sent him between ten and fifteen rubles a month to survive on, but Tsiolkovskii used much of...