The lead artwork for the first article in Collier's "Man Will Conquer Space Soon" series: Wernher von Braun's essay entitled "Crossing the Last Frontier."

"Scientists and engineers now know how to build a station in space that would circle the earth 1,075 miles up. The job would take 10 years, and cost twice as much as the atom bomb. If we do it, we can not only preserve the peace but we can take a long step in uniting mankind" (article lede).

The painting depicts a space station with a three-deck design, ferry rocket and space telescope 1,075 miles (1,750km) above Central America. It was captioned in the original article: "Men and materials arrive in the winged rocket and take "space taxis" to wheel-shaped space station at right. Men wear pressurized suits. Three 'space taxis' can be seen—one leaving rocket, another reaching satellite, a third near the already-built astronomical observatory" (p. 25).

This image in particular was an important inspiration for both George Pal's Conquest of Space (1955) and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Part of Chesley Bonestell’s appeal was his facility not just with alien landscapes, but also imagining how the earth would look from space. The image of Central America below is close to what an actual photograph would look like, especially impressive since the very first orbital satellite–the Russian Sputnik–was not launched until 1957. Images of the earth from low orbit were taken between 1946 and 1950 by cameras mounted on captured Nazi V2 rockets launched from New Mexico.