[ExI] Tsiolkovsky (Eugen Leitl)

[Tom Nowell]

Asking the archivist of the BIS is a good step. Thinking about it, I've seen Yakov Perelman's name come up as "a great populariser of Tsiolkovsky's ideas" and a prolific author of popular science works in Russian - maybe one of his books was translated into English and inspired people?

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/chronology_XX.html gives a Russia-centred view of spaceflight history, and says that the head of the RNII visited Tsiolkovsky at home in 1934, right around the time Korolev starts his work.

The earliest quote of Tsiolkovsky I've seen in English is from 1958 - I found a copy of "Soviet Space Science" by Ari Shternfeld (English translation) sold off by a local air force base, and it includes the appendix detailing the flight path of Sputnik One which proved some of the conjectures in the book true.

Tom