a couple of weeks ago I went over to the Botanic Gardens... I really love this old guy who just sits looking up at the sky.. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky fell deaf at the age of ten due to scarlet fever, and as school was no longer an option he turned to his love of rockets. Similar to Verne, even though Tsiolkovsky lived in a time well before space travel was considered possible, he is regarded by many to be the father of astronautics as many of his theories and ideas proved to be accurate and are still relevant in space travel today. So famous did he become that a spaceship was named after him in the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation . info on Konstantin from this post on this blog