Can We Get to Mars?

The 30 April 1954 issue of Collier's magazine published the article "Can We Get to Mars?" by Wernher von Braun with Cornelius Ryan. Von Braun was then Chief of the Guided Missile Development Division, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. Travel to Mars was the subject of the eighth and final installment of the wildly influential Collier's series which had begun in March 1952 with "Crossing the Last Frontier." Here, von Braun writes: "The first men who set out for Mars had better make sure they leave everything at home in apple-pie order. They won't get back to earth for more than two and a half years ... Will man ever go to Mars? I am sure he will—but it will be a century or more before he's ready." Seventy years on from this article, this prediction is still credible. NASA has stated that human missions to Mars may begin "as early as the 2030s."

This painting was the lead image of the article and captioned, "Near wheel-shaped space station 1,000 miles from the earth, built especially for assembly of the Mars expedition, weightless workers put together the 10 rocket ships required for the flight. Three of the huge space craft have torpedo noses which convert to planes for landing on the planet." The rotating wheel space station, also known as a von Braun wheel, is particularly noteworthy. He envisaged it with three decks, big enough for a crew of 80, and in rotation to create an artificial gravity.