Biography: The famous scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

Part of the Voenizdat series Scientific-Popular Library of the Soldier and Sailor, written by Kosmodemyansky for Soviet Army personnel (preface dated Moscow 1945–1948; approved for press November 1948). The preface presents Tsiolkovsky as the founder of the modern theory of jet propulsion, whose all-metal dirigible, aeroplane and rocket projects are now being realised in jet aircraft and long-range rockets, and credits his pupils in Soviet aircraft design.

The text opens with a frontispiece portrait and a biography from his birth in the village of Izhevskoe, Ryazan province (1857), and the closing page urges soldiers to dream, calculate and experiment, quoting his motto that the impossible of today will be possible tomorrow.

Kosmodemyansky’s Stenographed Lectures on Tsiolkovsky (1948, also in this catalog) cover the same subject as a public lecture, and he would edit the Russian edition of Ballistics of the Future a year later. Two copies in the collection.