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Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky lived in the early 20th century in Russia, and was perhaps the first person to ever work out mathematically in detail how a rocket would get into Space. He discovered that it was the reaction principle, from Newton's 2nd law (for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction), would allow for space travel. Although he did no experimenting or building, he showed that in theory it was possible to use a rocket to escape from Earth's gravitational field and navigate in space. He designed several rockets, including ones that used liquid gas fuels, and Multi-Stage rockets. Using his design for a Multi-Stage rocket, he showed that you could use much less fuel to raise a larger payload into an orbital velocity. Although he did advance the rocket powered space travel from merely idea into proven mathematical theory, he did not conduct any experiments with the rockets he designed.
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