NARRATOR: Kaluga,
Russia, May 1903.
Little-known Russian
schoolteacher Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky publishes
a landmark paper
on rocket science titled
"Exploration of Outer Space
by Means of Rocket Devices."
At a time when the Wright
brothers are still working
to achieve the first
powered flight,
Tsiolkovsky writes about
groundbreaking concepts
for the exploration of space,
including what he calls
the ideal rocket
equation, a formula which
calculates the amount of
velocity needed to lift
a body into outer space.
Incredibly, his theories would
prove instrumental in helping
the Soviet Union launch the
first man-made object into
orbit more than 50 years later.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
wasn't a classically trained
scientist.
He was a secondary-school
math teacher,
but he was so enamored
with getting into space
that he created the rocket
science and mathematics
in the early 1900s that
led to the first thing
created by humanity to be
launched into space, Sputnik.
To put into perspective how
influential Tsiolkovsky's
work was, this was the
basis work that everybody
had to use later.
Von Braun used it during
his research on rockets,
and most of the world
sees the Tsiolkovsky
rocket equation as the beginning
of modern rocket science.
PAUL STONEHILL: Where
did he get those ideas?
Where does his
knowledge come from?
His ideas about space and
civilizations that populate it
were incredible, and he
persisted that when humans will
go into outer space,
we will become
like other alien civilizations.
NARRATOR: Alien civilizations?
How did a Russian math teacher
who grew up in a small village
in eastern Russia come to
believe that there were
other intelligent
beings in the universe
and that it was
mankind's destiny
to join them in the cosmos?
The answer is simple.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, like
millions of other Russians
of his day, subscribed to a
philosophy known as cosmism,
which promoted the
idea that humanity
has an ancient connection
to extraterrestrial beings.
Russian cosmism began in
the mid and late 19th century.
Within the traditions
of cosmism,
there are many who
believe that our origins
are actually alien in nature.
That is to say the
human civilization is
an alien transplant and
that in going into space
we are actually going back home.
NARRATOR: What made Tsiolkovsky
and others like him so certain
that aliens existed
and that space travel
held the key to
humans reconnecting
with these otherworldly beings?
For the answer,
ancient-astronaut theorists
point to Tsiolkovsky's
writings in which he described
extraterrestrial beings sending
messages and information
to mankind from the stars.
He also wrote that
he himself had
personally received a number of
interplanetary communications.
He also felt that he was
receiving telepathic messages
from extraterrestrials.
This leaves us to
ponder, was he actually
in contact with
intelligences from out there?
Did they guide his hand?
Did they supply this equation?
