science fic- tion. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857- 1935), for example, credited Jules Verne with planting the "first seeds" of the idea of interplanetary flight.
During the 1890s, Tsiolkovsky built the first wind tunnel to test aerodynamic designs. 1903 -the year the Wright brothers first flew their plane at Kitty Hawk -Tsiol-kovsky was tackling the theoretical problems of rocket engines (heat transfer, navigation mechanisms, and fuel-supply maintenance). His research feats are described...