Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program. 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. This volume contains both his scientific and philosophical works.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is recognized throughout the world as the father of astronautics. He was largely self-educated and in later life worked under extremely difficult conditions in an atmosphere that combined indifference with hostility and ridicule. But his extreme dedication to the idea of space flight never left him. Tsiolkovsky was 60 years old when the October Revolution of 1917 took place, yet most of his scientific papers were written after the revolution. At the time of his death in 1935 they exceeded 500. The tremendous advances of soviet science and technology culminated, in 1957, in the world's first spacecraft - Sputnik I, thus bringing to fruition the prophetic ideas of the great Russian pioneer of astronautics. This volume contains a selection of some of Tsiolkovsky's more important scientific works.