Little-known Russian schoolteacher Konstantin

Tsiolkovsky publishes a landmark paper

on rocket science titled "Exploration of Outer Space

by Means of Rocket Devices."

At a time when the Wright brothers are still working

to achieve the first powered flight,

Tsiolkovsky writes about groundbreaking concepts

for the exploration of space, including what he calls

the ideal rocket equation, a formula which

calculates the amount of velocity needed to lift

a body into outer space.

Incredibly, his theories would prove instrumental in helping

the Soviet Union launch the first man-made object into

orbit more than 50 years later.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wasn't a classically trained

scientist.

He was a secondary-school math teacher,

but he was so enamored with getting into space

that he created the rocket science and mathematics

in the early 1900s that led to the first thing

created by humanity to be launched into space, Sputnik.

To put into perspective how influential Tsiolkovsky's

work was, this was the basis work that everybody

had to use later.

Von Braun used it during his research on rockets,

and most of the world sees the Tsiolkovsky

rocket equation as the beginning of modern rocket science.

PAUL STONEHILL: Where did he get those ideas?

Where does his knowledge come from?

His ideas about space and civilizations that populate it

were incredible, and he persisted that when humans will

go into outer space, we will become

like other alien civilizations.

NARRATOR: Alien civilizations?

How did a Russian math teacher who grew up in a small village

in eastern Russia come to believe that there were

other intelligent beings in the universe

and that it was mankind's destiny

to join them in the cosmos?

The answer is simple.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, like millions of other Russians

of his day, subscribed to a philosophy known as cosmism,

which promoted the idea that humanity

has an ancient connection to extraterrestrial beings.

Russian cosmism began in the mid and late 19th century.

Within the traditions of cosmism,

there are many who believe that our origins

are actually alien in nature.

That is to say the human civilization is

an alien transplant and that in going into space

we are actually going back home.

NARRATOR: What made Tsiolkovsky and others like him so certain

that aliens existed and that space travel

held the key to humans reconnecting

with these otherworldly beings?

For the answer, ancient-astronaut theorists

point to Tsiolkovsky's writings in which he described

extraterrestrial beings sending messages and information

to mankind from the stars.

He also wrote that he himself had

personally received a number of interplanetary communications.

He also felt that he was receiving telepathic messages

from extraterrestrials.

This leaves us to ponder, was he actually

in contact with intelligences from out there?

Did they guide his hand?

Did they supply this equation?