His most important work, Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices (1903), pioneered astronautic theory, proving for the first time that space flight could be propelled by boosters. There he became fascinated with the colonisation of space, which he came to believe would liberate humankind and lead to the perfection of the species.Ī recluse by nature, Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a remote log cabin, where he devoted himself to "each atom's eternal well-being". At the age of 10, Tsiolkovsky caught scarlet fever and became almost completely deaf: schools barred him from entry, so for three years he studied at the Rumyantsev under Fyodorov's guidance. His most brilliant protégé, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, was also defined by a traumatic childhood event. How the USSR trained its space explorersĭespite his focus on lost ancestors, Fyodorov's legacy was to inspire new generations.Yuri Gagarin: the spaceman who came in from the cold.Yet the further we venture, the more we will need to revive ("All matter is the dust of ancestors") – so the only solution is radical life extension: the death of death itself. But this will soon overpopulate the world, so it is imperative that we reach into space to settle on new stars, where the resurrected can live harmoniously. His Philosophy of the Common Task envisages a world in which each generation will resurrect its dead ancestors (we should give birth to fathers, he wrote, rather than children). All his intellectual endeavours can be understood as an attempt to repair that rupture, to restore and recapture a lost Eden. When his few written works were compiled for publication posthumously, they were accompanied with sticker stating: "Not for Sale".įyodorov's philosophy stemmed from the defining moment of his life – the deaths of his father and his father's father – and his family's subsequent departure from their rural idyll. Like Tolstoy, he opposed the idea of books as private property. Both men wished to divert war's destructive energies into ecological renewal ("A civilization that exploits, but does not restore, cannot have any other result than the approach of its own end," wrote Fyodorov). Fyodorov lamented that, while the poor remained at the mercy of droughts and floods, universities had become nothing more than "the backyards of factories and army barracks, that is, serving industrialism and militarism". Tolstoy and Fyodorov shared a similar creed, driven by a fierce resistance to war. He is sixty, a pauper, gives away all he has, is always cheerful and meek. Secondly, and most importantly, because of these beliefs he leads the purest Christian life. First, it is not as crazy as it sounds (don't worry, I do not and never have shared his views, but I have understood them enough to feel capable of defending them against any other beliefs of a similar material nature). He has devised a plan for a common task for humanity, the aim of which is the bodily resurrection of all humans. The novelist spent hours discussing Fyodorov's theories with the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, who regarded Fyodorov as a Christ-like figure, while Tolstoy described Fyodorov's worldview in a letter to a friend: Dostoevsky was in awe of "this great thinker… his ideas have enthralled me: when I read them and understand what they mean, I feel as if they are completely part of me, that they are close to my heart, that they could be mine". As librarian of the Rumyantsev Museum opposite the Kremlin, he hosted an informal intellectual salon, and his devotees referred to him as "the Socrates of Moscow". While Fyodorov's family had no connection to the first cosmonaut, Anastasia Gacheva of the Fyodorov Museum-Library in Moscow says there is "an important symbolic coincidence – between the Gagarin who foresaw spaceflight in a philosophical way, and Yuri Gagarin who became the world's first cosmonaut".įyodorov lived an ascetic lifestyle – sustained only by bread, tea and water – but he inhabited an exhilarating intellectual milieu. He was the illegitimate child of Prince Pavel Gagarin, and spent his early childhood on the family's country estate, until the sudden death of both his father and grandfather, Prince Ivan Gagarin. He has become an icon for transhumanists worldwide and a spiritual guide for interplanetary exploration.įyodorov's poverty came by religious choice rather than material necessity. Now, just as he prophesied, Fyodorov is living a strange afterlife. Nikolai Fyodorov died in obscurity, and he remains almost unknown in the West, yet in life he was celebrated by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and by a devoted group of disciples – one of whom is credited with winning the Space Race for the Soviet Union. On 28 December 1903, during a particularly harsh Russian winter, a pauper died of pneumonia on a trunk he had rented in a room full of destitute strangers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |