xkcd: Up Goer Five

[bystander]

Up Goer Five

[i]Another thing that is a bad problem is if you're flying toward space and the parts start to fall off your space car in the wrong order. If that happens, it means you won't go to space today, or maybe ever.[/i]

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This is Awesome: U.S. Space Team’s “Up Goer Five”
Universe Today | Jason Major | 2012 Nov 12

Up Goer Five
Planetary Society | Emily Lakdawalla | 2012 Nov 12

xkcd Explains How To Go to Space in Simple Language
Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2012 Nov 14

[emc]

Great post Bystander! Today keeps getting better.

[Beyond]

The trouble with Today, is that no matter how good it gets... it always turns into...

Tomorrow

[neufer]

<<Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (17 September [O.S. 5 September] 1857 – 19 September 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200 km southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, he appeared strange and bizarre to his fellow townsfolk. Along with his followers, the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.

Tsiolkovsky was born in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Edward Tsiolkovsky (in Polish: Ciołkowski), was Polish; his mother, Maria Yumasheva, was an educated Russian woman. His father was successively a forester, teacher, and minor government official. At the age of 9, Konstantin caught scarlet fever and became hard of hearing. He was not admitted to elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught.

After falling behind in his studies, Tsiolkovsky spent three years attending a library where Russian cosmism proponent Nikolai Fyodorov worked. He later came to believe that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human race, with immortality and a carefree existence.

Additionally, inspired by the fiction of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of spaceflight and the first person to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Tsiolkovsky worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920. He did not particularly flourish under a communist system, in particular Tsiolkovsky's support of eugenics made him politically unpopular. However, from the mid 1920s onwards the importance of his other work was acknowledged, and he was honoured for it. He died on 19 September 1935 in Kaluga and was buried in state.

Scientific achievements

[b][color=#0000FF]Tsiolkovsky's manned rocket, 1903. The rocket thrust chamber and a partition separate the fuel and oxidizer. The rectangles in the rear are rudders, part of the control equipment.[/color][/b]

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[b][color=#0000FF]Draft first space ship by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky[/color][/b]

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Tsiolkovsky stated that he developed the theory of rocketry only as a supplement to philosophical research on the subject. He wrote more than 400 works, most of which are little known to the general reader because of their questionable value.

During his lifetime he published approximately 90 works on space travel and related subjects. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multi-stage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.

The first scientific study of Tsiolkovsky dates to the year 1880–1881. Unaware of the discoveries already made, he wrote a paper called "Theory of Gases," in which he outlined the basis of the kinetic theory of gases. His second work – "The mechanics of the animal organism" received favorable feedback and Tsiolkovsky was inducted into the Russian Physico-Chemical Society. The main works of Tsiolkovsky after 1884 dealt with four major areas: the scientific rationale for the all-metal balloon (Airship), the streamlined airplane, trains, hovercraft, and rockets for interplanetary travel.

Tsiolkovsky developed the first aerodynamic laboratory in Russia in his apartment. In 1897, he built the first Russian wind tunnel with an open test section, developed a method of experiment in it and 1900, with a grant from the Academy of Sciences, made a purge of the simplest models and determined the drag coefficient of the ball, flat plates, cylinders, cones and other bodies. Tsiolkovsky's work in the field of aerodynamics was a source of ideas for Zhukovsky. Tsiolkovsky described the airflow of bodies of different geometric shapes.

Tsiolkovsky studied the mechanics of powered flight, which were designated "dirigibles" (the word "airship" had not yet been invented). Tsiolkovsky first proposed the idea of an all-metal dirigible, and built its model. The first printed work on the airship was "Managed Metallic Balloon" (1892), in which was given the scientific and technical rationale for the design of an airship with a metal sheath. Progressive for his time, Tsiolkovsky was not supported on the airship project: the author was refused a grant to build the model. An appeal to the General Aviation Staff of the Russian army also had no success. In 1892, he turned to the new and unexplored field of aircraft heavier than air. Tsiolkovsky's idea was to build an airplane with a metal frame. In the article "An airplane or a birdlike (aircraft) flying machine" (1894) are the descriptions and drawings of a monoplane, which by its appearance and aerodynamics was the design of an anticipated construction aircraft that would emerge over 15–18 years. In an Aviation Airplane, the wings have a thick profile with a rounded front edge and the fuselage is faired. But work on the airplane, as well as on the airship, did not receive recognition from the official representatives of Russian science. Tsiolkovsky's further research had neither monetary nor moral support.

Since 1896 Tsiolkovsky systematically studied the theory of motion of jet apparatus. Thoughts on the use of the rocket principle in the cosmos were expressed as early as 1883 by Tsiolkovsky. But a rigorous theory of jet propulsion described them in 1896. Tsiolkovsky derived the formula (it was called "Formula of Aviation"):

When finished recording math, Tsiolkovsky automatically set the date: 10 May 1897. His most important work, published in 1903, was The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices. Tsiolkovsky calculated, with the Tsiolkovsky equation, that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8,000 m/s (5 miles per second) and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. In 1911 he published the second part of the work "The study of outer space rocket appliances." Tsiolkovsky evaluates work to overcome the force of gravity, determines the speed needed to exit the device into the solar system ("escape velocity") and flight time.

Tsiolkovsky conceived a number of ideas that have been used in rockets. They included: gas rudders (graphite) for the rocket flight control and change the trajectory of its center of mass, use of components of the fuel to cool the outer shell of the spacecraft (during re-entry to Earth), the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle, pump system feeding the fuel components, the optimal descent trajectory of the spacecraft while returning from space, etc. In the field of rocket propellants Tsiolkovsky studied a large number of different oxidizing and combustible fuel and recommended pairings: liquid oxygen and hydrogen and oxygen with hydrocarbons. Tsiolkovsky had been developing the idea of the hovercraft since 1921, publishing a fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train"). In 1929 Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book Space Rocket Trains.

Tsiolkovsky championed the idea of the diversity of life in the universe, and was the first theorist and advocate of human space exploration.

Tsiolkovsky never built a rocket; he apparently did not expect many of his theories to ever be implemented. Only late in his lifetime was Tsiolkovsky honoured for his pioneering work. He supported the Bolshevik Revolution, and the new Soviet government wished to identify itself with technology. In 1918 he was elected as a member of the Socialist Academy, and in 1921 received a lifetime pension.

Although many called his ideas impractical, Tsiolkovsky influenced later rocket scientists throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun. Russian search teams at Peenemünde found a German translation of a book by Tsiolkovsky of which "almost every page...was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes." Leading Russian rocket-engine designer Valentin Glushko and rocket designer Sergey Korolyov studied Tsiolkovsky's works as youths, and both sought to turn Tsiolkovsky's theories into reality. In particular, Korolyov saw traveling to Mars as the more important priority, until in 1964 he decided to compete with the American Project Apollo for the Moon.

Tsiolkovsky wrote a book called The Will of the Universe. The Unknown Intelligence in 1928 in which he propounded a philosophy of panpsychism. He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way galaxy.>>

[geckzilla]

Haha, that was strangely difficult to understand.

[Ann]

Haha, that was strangely difficult to understand.

I took one look and decided - hey, I'm reading this for fun, and this i's beyond me (maybe in Beyonderland). And it isn't even about stars or galaxies. So I'll give this one a pass.

But I really like the weird and wonderful world of xkcd!

Ann

[Beyond]

It does seem to go well, with the ARTistic touch of neufer.