The philosphy of cosmism was founded on the principle that the future of humanity lies in space. Nikolai Fedorov is widely considered the leading cosmist philosopher, whose writing detailed the destiny of humankind and inpsired generations of scientists and dreamers.
It was Fedorov’s friend and follower, Konstantine Tsiolkovsky who made the leap from fantasy to science when he calculated the mathematical means of launching a rocket into orbit. Tsiolkovsky’s predictions went even further to include illustrations portraying the technical problems of life support in space and the spacecraft environment.