“Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the occult roots of Soviet space travel”
Michael Hagemeister
The word “occult” has two meanings: firstly, it means “hidden” or “concealed”, but it can also mean “esoteric” and “supernatural”, relating to the transcendental, magic preternatural world. Both meanings apply to “the occult roots of Soviet space travel”: the previously hidden, repressed, and therefore uncon- scious roots of the Soviet space program and its connection with the world of the supernatural.
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii (1857–1935), a nearly deaf school- teacher of physics and mathematics in the then obscure provincial town of Kaluga, is considered to be the “father” or even “grandfather” of Soviet space travel. His patriarchal status rests on a series of path-breaking ideas — all being developed and published before the Bolshevik revolution—such as the expansion into outer space by means of liquid-propellant rockets, plans for manned space stations as well as the description of survival conditions in spacecraft.
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Read them online in English or download them for free in PDF format on the page “Scientific Heritage” of the website.
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