They Blazed the Trail for the Space Pioneers (on some little-known Ukrainian names in the history of astronautics and rocketry)

摘要

Presented is a tour d"horizon of the lives and main space- and rocketry-related activities of four Ukrainian forerunners to the famous space pioneers. The talented inventor Olexander Zasyad'ko (1779-1837) created a new rocket system and elaborated a theory of rocket propulsion. Konstantin Konstantinov (1818-1871) - engineer, inventor, designer - is to be mentioned for the rocket fuel combustion formula he proposed in 1857, long before the famous Tsiolkovsky formula surfaced. Mykola Kibal'chich (1853-1881) was among the first scientists who precisely elaborated and substantiated the idea of the rocket engine use for the flights. The real genius Yuriy Kondratyuk (Olexander Shargey, 1897-1942), who was well in advance of his time, had a very tragic fate. Being just 17 years old, he proposed a scheme (in after years called "the Kondratyuk's route") of the space flight which was later, in the 1960s, used for both launching unmanned spacecraft, as well as for man flights to the Moon (by Americans). He elaborated original schemes of the launch vehicle control systems; stressed the importance of the safety measures for astronauts, invented thermal protection system for the descending module...But most of his life he was forced to live incognito, and died at the WWII front.