They Blazed the Trail for the Space Pioneers (On Some Little-Known Ukrainian Names in the History of Astronautics and Rocketry)

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 mentioned for the rocket fuel combustion formula he proposed in 1857, long before the famous Konstantin Tsiol-kovsky 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 later years called "the Kondratyuk's route") of spaceflight which was later, in the 1960s, used for both launching unmanned spacecraft, as well as for human flights to the Moon (by Americans). He elaborated original schemes of the launch vehicle control systems, stressed the importance of safety measures for astronauts, and invented a thermal protection system for the descending module. But most of his life, he was forced to live incognito, and died at the front during World War II.