In 1952, Collier's magazine famously published a set of articles about space travel with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell and text by Wernher von Braun and others. A blog called DREAMS OF SPACE has posted scans of the articles here:

http://dreamsofspace.blogspot....an-will-conquer.html

Many people in the space business in the 1950s and 1960s credited Collier's with kick-starting the space age. It certainly inspired Disney to to do three TV specials about space shortly afterwards.

The popular interest in space was one of the motivating factors behind Bradbury's attempts to get his stories on TV in the late '50s, and shortly afterwards his writing of the first screenplay for THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (unfilmed).

Thanks for that link! OMG! I remember that issue of Collier's. Chesley Bonestell became my hero after seeing his paintings. He taught me how to draw moon craters (all over my school notebooks, of course.)

I was in neither the right place nor the right time to see the article in its original incarnation, but as a space buff I have known of its existence for a few decades. It was one of those items which I have searched the web for, periodically, but without success... until now.

I love this stuff!
I feel so cheated! We should have done all this and more by now. We put a man on the moon with no computers and drawings done by hand.
I watch "2001, A Space Odyssey" part 2 (the space station, etc.) with a Nostalgia for What Might Have Been.

...and Collier's 1950 atomb-bomb issue, in my new blog post.