MAN WILL CONQUER SPACE SOON: WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

The front cover artwork for the first "Man Will Conquer Space Soon" issue in Collier's. The first of many important collaborations between Chesley Bonestell and the rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun.

The opening words of the Collier's editorial speak for themselves on the importance of the series led by this image: "On the following pages Collier's presents what may be one of the most important scientific symposiums ever published by a national magazine. It is the story of the inevitability of man's conquest of space.

What you will read here is not science fiction. It is serious fact. Moreover, it is an urgent warning that the U.S. must immediately embark on a long-range development program to secure for the West "space superiority." If we do not, somebody else will. The somebody else very probably would be the Soviet Union" (p.23).

The present artwork, published on the front cover, depicts the separation of the third stage of the manned ferry rocket 40 miles (64km) above the Pacific Ocean. This depiction of a winged space shuttle appeared 29 years before the U.S. actually launched a similar spacecraft. "This was the first of the Collier's paintings on which Bonestell and Wernher von Braun collaborated. Von Braun took Chesley to task for showing the second-stage engines glowing red-hot, saying that a good engineer would have prevented that by providing an adequate cooling system (Miller & Durant, p.76).

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of the Collier's series on the Space Race or to exaggerate the importance of the Space Race for American culture and technological ambition. "The Collier's articles were the beginning of the Golden Age of spaceflight—that period during which the American public showed a fascination, enthusiasm and support for spaceflight it had never shown before or since ... A browse through the books and magazines of this era reveals a preoccupation with space travel that almost amounted to an obsession: toys, advertisement, movies, television—everything seemed to have a rocket or space theme ... If anyone had to illustrate a rocketship it had to look like a Collier's rocket or it just wasn't right. They were the standard" (ibid).