Catalog A · 1933

The Future Of Reactive Engines.

Mikoni, K.S.

Cover of The Future Of Reactive Engines.
Cover of The Future Of Reactive Engines.
Year
1933
By
Mikoni, K.S.
Published
Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia.
Edition
Russian. First edition, softcover.
Ciancone
R36.
Shelf
R6
Catalog
Catalog A · Early Pioneers

The colophon records this printing as sent to typesetting 14 April 1933 and approved for press 2 July 1933, a run of 10,000 copies, with no reference to an earlier edition — so this appears to be a first edition rather than a reprint.

It's a popular survey rather than a technical work: a history of the rocket from the Chinese fire-arrow through Congreve's war rockets to 1930s rocket cars, a dramatized account of Nikolai Kibalchich awaiting execution in a tsarist prison cell in 1881, anxiously asking his lawyer whether specialists had yet reviewed the rocket-powered flying machine he had designed there (he was executed without ever learning its fate), a biographical sketch of Tsiolkovsky's years as a schoolteacher in Kaluga, summaries of Esnault-Pelterie's and Oberth's spaceflight calculations, and an account of Max Valier's Opel-Sander rocket car and railcar trials of 1928. It closes with a short science-fiction epilogue imagining a time traveler's visit to a future communist society that has spread through the solar system.

No original research here, but a solidly illustrated period popularization.

Where it sits in Catalog A

61 entries, 1869 to 1970

186919331970

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Cite this entry

Text and compilation are CC0

Mikoni, K.S. The Future Of Reactive Engines. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1933. Russian. First edition, softcover. Ciancone R36. The Alustiza Collection, Catalog A: Early Pioneers. https://www.spacecollector.net/catalog-a/the-future-of-reactive-engines/