"Man on the Moon. THE JOURNEY" (article title).

This illustration was used for as a double-page opening spread for this article in Collier's famous "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" series. The full caption read: "Weightless in orbit 1,075 miles above earth, workers in space suits assemble three moon ships. Hawaiian islands lie below. Winged transports unload supplies near wheel-shaped space station top left. Engineers and equipment cluster around cargo ship lower left, passenger ships center and right."

Wernher von Braun, the author of this article as well as many others in Collier's space series, was incredibly prescient about so many aspects of aerospace engineering, but not always. In this 1952 article, for mankind's first voyage to the moon he envisaged three rocket ships, a crew of fifty astronauts, and a six-week stay on the lunar surface. Such a flotilla and all its supplies could not be launched directly from earth, the plan instead was to supply an orbiting space station incrementally over a period of six months and to assemble the ships in orbit, as shown here. Von Braun goes into further detail on the construction process, "The men move clumsily, hampered by bulky pressurized suits equipped with such necessities of space-life as air conditioning, oxygen tanks, walkie-talkie radios and tiny rocket motors for propulsion. The work is laborious, for although objects are weightless they still have inertia. A man who shoves a one-ton girder makes it move all right, but he makes himself move, too..." Although von Braun's vision was not realized for the moon landing, space stations became a reality shortly afterward. The Soviets launched the Salyut 1 in 1971 and the Americans followed with Skylab (which had much greater capacity for research) in 1973.