“The Call of the Cosmos”
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Original: “Путь к звездам. Сборник произведений”
Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow
1960
CONTENTS
FOREWORD. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
ON THE MOON. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
DREAMS OF EARTH AND SKY. Translated by D. Myshne
ON VESTA. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
OUTSIDE THE EARTH. Translated by V. Tulmy <.
THE AIMS OF ASTRONAUTICS. Translated by X. Danko .
CHANGES IN RELATIVE WEIGHT. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
LIVING BEINGS IN THE COSMOS. Translated by X. Dunko .
BIOLOGY OF DWARFS AND GIANTS. Translaled by A. Shkarovsky
ISLAND OF ETHER. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
BEYOND THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
B. N. VOROBYOV. SCIENCE FICTION IN TSIOLKOVSKY’S WRITINGS. Translated by A. Shkarovsky
Supplements
1. To Inventors of Reaction-Propelied Machines
2. Is This Mere Fantasy?
3. Pages from a Young Man’s Notebook
FOREWORD
Taken as a whole, this book makes interesting, even fascinating reading. Tsiolkovsky’s stories are of tremendous interest and urge us to ponder over the many purely specific problems of space travel. They will, undoubtedly, increase the number of enthusiasts in this branch of science and technology. His “On the Moon”, “Outside the Earth” and other stories afford hours of entertainment and leave a lasting impression.
Illustrated here is the world outlook of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, original thinker, self-taught scientist, founder and keen enthusiast of space travel. Though man is bound by every fibre to his home-planet, Tsiolkovsky argues that he stands to gain immeasurably by gradually conquering space. Life in space, where there is no acceleration of gravity in relation to manned spacecraft, or even on such objects as the Moon or the asteroids, where the gravity is negligible compared with the Earth’s, presents tremendous advantages, Tsiolkovsky claims, since with the same effort itis possible there to accomplish an incomparably greater amount of work. In addition, in the absence of disease-producing germs and drawing on the Sun’s continuous radiation, it will be possible to cultivate in artificial hothouses with temperature control and air-conditioning, various kinds of plants, which provide food for a human population and also consume the excreta of animal organisms.
The achievement of this balance between animal and plant life on mammoth space rockets, a balance which would make possible space journeys of indefinite duration, provided the consumption of solar energy is con- trolled, presents an extremely interesting idea that should be closely examined with a view to the possibility of actually putting it into practice.
One may also agree with Tsiolkovsky in thinking that life will develop and prosper wonderfully in the absence of gravity pull as well and that for anima! organisms atmospheric pressure can be much lower than what is usual and normal on the Earth. What he has to say about the different apparatus for making rocket travel comfortable in the absence of gravity, is most absorbing.
His descriptions of lunar landscapes, and journeys on the Moon, his fantastic stories about leaping lunar animals or beast-plants which either hide in crevices or try to keep abreast of the Sun to escape the approaching cold of the lunar nights, are most entrancing. Even these fantastic stories seem quite in place, because, for all their absolute improbability, they soften the picture we have of the harsh and rigorous natural conditions on the Moon.
However, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky lets his imagination run away with him, when he begins to describe the imaginary life of intelligent creatures on Mercury, Mars, the asteroids and other planets. Consequently, “Life in Space”, “On Vesta”, “Mercury”, “Mars”, “The Asteroids” and several other stories are fantasies of the first water, and where mention is made of intelligent beings on planets and asteroids no worthwhile information is desirable. Stories of this kind include his “Island of Ether’—about the structure and evolution of the Universe. Like the physicists of the nineteenth century, the author assumes that there exists “light ether” which, in his opinion, does not extend far beyond the limits of the material Universe accessible to us. Thus, in his opinion, our system of galaxies must be hopelessly isolated from other similar systems, as in the absence between them of an ether medium capable of transmitting light, they must be totally inaccessible to observation. These arbitrary assertions—and this should be emphasised do not at all coincide with Tsiolkovsky’s general outlook, since he considered that there were no limits to our cognition of the infinite Universe.
And even those of Tsiolkovsky’s writings, which are acceptable from the scientific point of view, contain several errors to which attention should be drawn.
In the first place, Tsiolkovsky does not sufficiently take into account that even in the case of diminished gravity the same inert mass remains, to which the same force must be applied to impart a definite acceleration as that applied on the Earth. Further, he overestimates the possibility of protecting a living organism from the excessive gravity which occur, for instance, during rocket acceleration, by immersing the living organism in an air-tight water bath. It is true, as Tsiolkovsky indicates, that the immersed organism would scarcely feel any violent blows on the outside of the vessel. But it would certainly feel intensive deceleration or acceleration of the vessel as a whole, and this might even prove fatal. The author completely underestimates the danger of collisions with meteorites and his descriptions of the way one might catch approaching bolides from the spacecraft, using something like a butterfly net, are most curious and can be attributed to his own typical brand of humour. Because in actual fact every time one of the host of micrometeorites whirring through space hits a spacecraft, it produces a minor explosion and is sure to dent the plating of the spaceship. These direct hits which should occur extremely often would almost immediately destroy the external green-house suggested by the author, which is shielded from its cosmic environment only by thin glass panes.
Even far from the Earth, where its gravitational pull exerts almost no influence, the relative speed at which the meteorite collides with the spacecraft will nevertheless be of the order of several kilometres, even tens of kilometres, a second. Hosts of meteorites thus would constitute a con- siderable danger to the safety of the spacecraft.
Various factors in some of Tsiolkovsky’s writings are occasionally wrongly appraised. For instance, he points out several times that the temperature in the focus of mirrors concentrating the Sun’s rays of a definite intensity will reach 6000°C. Purely theoretically a temperature of this order is conceivable only when the Sun’s angular dimensions are magnified by mirrors to the dimensions of a complete sphere which, in practice, is not possible.
In accordance with the notions current at the time his stories were written, Tsiolkovsky speaks about each star being surrounded by a family of planets and all these planets being inhabited irrespective of their temperatures and other physical conditions. In his opinion—to which, incidentally, other authors have frequently subscribed – the living organism can be composed of any kind of elements able to produce liquid compounds at a given temperature. There is not even the slightest mention of the unique part played in the structure of the living organism by compounds of carbon with oxygen, hydrogen and also nitrogen, which require absolutely specific, strictly defined conditions. Neither did Tsiolkovsky think an atmosphere indispensable for organic life, presuming that organisms can produce and subsist on their own micro-atmospheres. There is no need to show the completely fantastic nature of such ideas.
Tsiolkovsky rendered a great service in so zealously advocating attempts to conquer outer space. But his fantasies in this direction knew no limits. He wanted to emphasise that mankind will of necessity migrate to other planets circling around some other sun, when our own Sun will have greatly cooled, which he thinks may happen in several million years from now. Of course, in Tsiolkovsky’s time the gravitational energy of compression was thought to be the sole means by which the Sun maintained radiation. However, to think today that the Sun may cool, in the direct sense of the word, is out of the question. It may, of course, ultimately pass into the category of white dwarf stars, which though of unusual density and having insignificant radiation, nevertheless have a high internal temperature. This process will require not millions but at least several thousands of millions of years. In some of his writings Tsiolkovsky suggests that the populations of the numerous planetary systems in various parts of the Universe establish associations or alliances of mutual assistance for promoting migrations to the most suitable planets, in order to avoid the dangers arising from their own suns “going out of commission”. Here Tsiolkovsky reaches the extreme limits of fantasy.
Actually life in outer space should be viewed as a rare exception, and not a universal rule. However, this in no way minimises the vast scientific and practical importance of Tsiolkovsky’s ideas about space exploration, on the threshold of which we now stand as a result of the tremendous Soviet scientific and technical achievements that have now ushered in a new era in the history of mankind.
The break through into space is proceeding along much the same lines as those which Tsiolkovsky forecast with such extraordinary insight so many decades ago. Tsiolkovsky was a most unique person and everything associated with him is of great interest. So though many of his statements are unacceptable today, they still serve as the best possible illustration of the fact that Tsiolkovsky was more than a designer of jet engines. In his dreams and scientific fiction he was already beginning to live in space.
ACADEMICIAN V. G. FESENKOV
Moscow, October, 1960
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