Tsiolkovsky, rockets and forces.

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Tsiolkovsky was a hearing impaired Russian theorist and a great visionary. Tsiolkovsky was the first to establish theories regarding rockets with calculations to back them up. He was the first to calculate the escape velocity of the earth. He had a great imagination, foreseeing not only much of the development of rocketry and space travel to this point, but also developments beyond where we are today. In his mind rockets would carry people out to space stations and then on to the moon and mars. He predicted space suits, artificial gravity and terraforming. He never put his ideas to a practical test by actually launching a rocket; however he had many insights into how rocket design could be improved. He felt that liquid fuelled rockets would be preferable to solid fuelled rockets, since the thrust on a liquid fuelled rocket could be adjusted by varying the flow rate of the fuel. Tsiolkovsky also developed the idea of specific momentum for rocket fuels, the hotter and lighter a fuel is, the better the thrust for a rocket. He suggested that rockets should have stages to prevent them carrying excess mass. the best known is the theory of rocket flight which he