[ExI] Tsiolkovsky

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:53:45AM -0400, David Lubkin wrote:
> Does anyone have any idea how Tsiolkovsky's famous line in a 1911
> letter ("A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle
> forever.") got from Russian to Western sf writers and space enthusiasts?
> Goddard might have read it but I can't see him quoting it. Arthur Clarke
> wrote that Tsiolkovsky wasn't widely known outside the USSR until the

In the USSR 1920s.

> Thirties. Perhaps through Hermann Oberth or Willy Ley?

I would suspect by way of Korolev, but I have no proof.
I've spent a few minutes digging, but it would be hard to
trace, given it's way pre-web. You have to drill down
into academic papers using the full quote.
 
> The earliest quotations I have in my library are from 1968 but surely he
> was quoted long before that. The best-known early pro-space groups
> were all founded circa the Thirties — Verein für Raumschiffahrt (1927),
> American Interplanetary Society (1930), and the British Interplanetary
> Society (1933).