Konstantin Ivanovich Konstantinov was a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 artillery officer and scientist in the fields of artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

, rocketry

Rocket

A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

 and instrument making. He completed his military career at the rank of Lieutenant General

Lieutenant General

Lieutenant General is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages where the title of Lieutenant General was held by the second in command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a Captain General....

.

Konstantinov graduated from Mikhailovskoye Artillery School in St.Petersburg in 1836. In 1844, he invented a device for measuring flight speed of projectile

Projectile

A projectile is any object projected into space by the exertion of a force. Although a thrown baseball is technically a projectile too, the term more commonly refers to a weapon....

s at any point of their trajectory

Trajectory

A trajectory is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. The object might be a projectile or a satellite, for example. It thus includes the meaning of orbit—the path of a planet, an asteroid or a comet as it travels around a central mass...

. In 1847 Konstantinov created a ballistic

Ballistics

Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...

 rocket pendulum

Pendulum

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position...

, which would allow to establish a law of changing rocket motion in time. With the help of this device, he was able to determine the influence of form and design of a rocket on its ballistic characteristics, thereby laying the foundations for calculated rocket designs. In 1849 he was appointed commander of the Petersburg Rocketry Department (Петербургское ракетное заведение). In 1861, he supervised the construction of a rocket factory in Nikolayev

Mykolaiv

Mykolaiv , also known as Nikolayev , is a city in southern Ukraine, administrative center of the Mykolaiv Oblast. Mykolaiv is the main ship building center of the Black Sea, and, arguably, the whole Eastern Europe.-Name of city:...

, which he would head six years later.

Konstantinov is known to have created structurally perfect missile

Missile

Though a missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a self-propelled guided weapon system.-Etymology:The word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send"...

s (for the 19th century) with the range of 4 to 5 km, launch pad

Launch pad

A launch pad is the area and facilities where rockets or spacecraft lift off. A spaceport can contain one or many launch pads. A typical launch pad consists of the service and umbilical structures. The service structure provides an access platform to inspect the launch vehicle prior to launch....

s, and rocket-making machines. He authored a number of works on rocket science, artillery, firearms, pyrotechnics

Pyrotechnics

Pyrotechnics is the science of using materials capable of undergoing self-contained and self-sustained exothermic chemical reactions for the production of heat, light, gas, smoke and/or sound...

, and aeronautics

Aeronautics

Aeronautics is the science involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of airflight-capable machines, or the techniques of operating aircraft and rocketry within the atmosphere...

. A crater

Konstantinov (crater)

Konstantinov is a lunar impact crater that is located to the southeast of the Mare Moscoviense, on the far side of the Moon. To the west of Konstantinov is the smaller crater Nagaoka, and to the south-southeast is the small Van Gent....

 on the far side of the Moon is named after Konstantin Konstantinov.

External links

• Biography of Konstantinov - in Russian