20 Roubles Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Transnistria — the narrow strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border, unrecognized by any United Nations member state — issues collector coinage through its Republican Bank as a soft assertion of governmental function. The choice of Tsiolkovsky is locally logical: he was born in 1857 in Izhevskoye, Russia, but his theoretical work on multi-stage rockets and liquid propellants, developed largely in obscurity in Kaluga, became the direct intellectual foundation for the Soviet space program decades after his death in 1935.

Korolev kept a portrait of Tsiolkovsky in his office.