Works On Rocket Technology.

A collection of Tsiolkovsky’s principal writings on rocket technology, edited by M. K. Tikhonravov and printed by the military publisher Oborongiz in 1947. Tikhonravov, himself a leading Soviet rocket engineer, opens it with a 21-page introductory essay. He sets out how Tsiolkovsky approached spaceflight as a practical engineering problem, from a stratospheric rocket-assisted aeroplane to an interplanetary ship and settlements among the asteroids, and credits B. N. Vorobev with finding Tsiolkovsky’s 1883 manuscript “Free Space” among his papers.

The works are arranged by date. They begin with Raketa v kosmicheskoe prostranstvo (The Rocket into Cosmic Space, 1903) and the successive versions of Issledovanie mirovykh prostranstv reaktivnymi priborami (Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, 1911, 1914 and 1926). Later items include “Cosmic Ship” (1924), “The Cosmic Rocket: Experimental Preparation” (1927), “Cosmic Rocket Trains” (1929), the reactive aeroplane, rocket-plane and semi-reactive stratoplane papers of 1929–1932, “Fuel for the Rocket,” the steam-gas turbine engine, projectiles reaching cosmic velocity on land or water (1933) and “The Greatest Speed of a Rocket” (1935), with tables of rocket velocity against the ratio of propellant to vehicle mass. An appendix reprints F. A. Tsander’s 1934 preface and remarks to Tsiolkovsky’s Selected Works.

The volume reproduces Tsiolkovsky’s original drawings and manuscript sketches, a portrait photograph, and the title page of the 1914 edition of his Exploration of Cosmic Space. Its blue cloth boards are stamped in gold and red with a rocket, and the endpapers show a rocket leaving the Earth.

Also in the collection: Tsander’s The Problem Of Flight With The Aid Of Reactive Vehicles (1947), likewise edited by Tikhonravov.