"Baby space station's last moments. With San Francisco Bay in background, satellite plunges into atmosphere in fiery windup to 60-day flight ... the spectacular finish of man's first step in the conquest of space" (Collier's).

This launch scene featured as the final image of the "Baby Space Station" article in the 25 June 1953 issue of Collier's, the penultimate issue of the famed "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" series. To further quote the article, "The cost of the baby satellite project will be absorbed into the four-billion-dollar 10-year program to establish the bigger satellite. We scientists can have the baby rocket within five to seven years if we begin work now. Five years later, we could have the manned space station." The unmanned, baby space station, was not destined to survive its journey. It would go from rocket to satellite, to burning up on reentry: "Then suddenly the satellite will disappear in a long white streak of brilliant light—marking the spectacular finish of man's first step in the conquest of space" (page 40).