An unpublished version of one of Bonestell’s most famous images. It depicts the separation of the second-stage of a manned rocket above the Pacific Ocean. The shuttle (ferry) portion has the large fins of Wernher von Braun’s rockets of circa 1952, much larger even than those of the V-2 rocket. The painting is almost a mirror image of the one which was published on the front cover of the inaugural "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" issue in Collier's magazine on 22 March 1952. That painting 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). In this version, Bonestell has corrected for Wernher von Braun's mistake.

The present painting was made for Man and the Moon, a history of the American moonshot published in 1961, the same year that the first Saturn rockets were launched.