Tsiolkovsky with a member of the Cosmic Voyage film crew

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, shown here seated next to a member of the Cosmic Voyage film crew and using one of his home-made ear trumpets, honed his design for a spaceship over many years. There is no clear evidence he made any models of it, but others did, using the many drawings he produced in 30 years of imaginative design work starting in the 1900s.

Credit: The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences