Under his command, the Ada<\/em> transported Russian troops across the Danube, and Kostovi\u0107 was awarded the rank of captain in the Russian fleet. He is attributed with the words: “I am a Slav, and for the mother of all Slavs, Russia, I am ready to lay down my life!”<\/strong>\u2014his response when a Russian military representative asked him to remain as the captain of the Ada<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the war, he was wounded but continued working on his first project even while in the hospital. He designed a “fish-boat” for eight people, capable of staying submerged for about 20 hours. In October 1878, he appealed to Russian Emperor Alexander II to become a Russian citizen, and soon after, he moved to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His fish-boat<\/em> project (essentially a submarine prototype) was reviewed by the Naval Technical Committee\u2019s scientific department in November 1878 but was criticized primarily due to its lack of a sufficiently powerful engine to propel the boat at the necessary speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This critique motivated Kostovi\u0107 to study the existing engines of the time seriously. He happened to attend a lecture by the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev on designing a stratospheric balloon with a hermetically sealed cabin and an airship with balloons filled with compressed air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From that moment, Kostovi\u0107 became passionately devoted to the idea of flight. By 1879, at a meeting of the First Russian Society of Aeronauts<\/em>, he presented his airship project. The most striking feature of this original design was the gasoline internal combustion engine with electric ignition. At that time, such engines did not yet exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his design, Kostovi\u0107 was the first to apply not only the idea of electric ignition but also a configuration with opposed piston movement in oppositely placed cylinders. It is worth noting that gasoline was primarily used at the time as a household cleaning agent for removing grease stains from clothes. Kostovi\u0107\u2019s idea was supported by the Society of Aeronauts<\/em>, which founded the Association for the Construction of the Airship \u2018Russia\u2019<\/em>. Private investments of 200,000 rubles were collected, and the Ministry of War allocated an additional 35,000 rubles for the airship’s construction (for comparison, the average annual wage of a worker in Russia in 1879 was 189 rubles).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Construction of the airship began in 1882 in St. Petersburg. The engine built for it, completed two years later, had a power output of 80 horsepower. The plan was for the airship\u2019s structural components to be made of “arborite” (plywood soaked in a special type of resin), a material Kostovi\u0107 himself developed. It is notable that 30 years later, Igor Sikorsky used a similar material in the construction of his famous Ilya Muromets<\/em> aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1888, the airship was nearly completed, but final assembly was hindered by a lack of funds. Kostovi\u0107 again appealed to the Ministry of War for assistance, offering to sell the unfinished airship to the military. However, his proposal was rejected due to additional costs. In his report, the chairman of the Aviation Commission, Lieutenant General Mikhail Boreskov, warned Engineer General Konstantin Zverev that “merely testing this unfinished construction would cost over half a million rubles.”<\/strong> More importantly, the effectiveness of such airships for military purposes was called into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, Kostovi\u0107\u2019s project ended in failure. However, just ten years later, the world\u2019s first airship with an internal combustion engine took flight in Germany. During the Soviet era, rumors circulated that the Germans had somehow learned details of Kostovi\u0107\u2019s engine, though no concrete evidence has ever been provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Vazduhoplovstvo.jpg\")
PRO\u010cITAJTE VI\u0160E:<\/mark><\/h4>\n\n\n\n