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An interesting historical note: Pat Ricketts, one of Robert Collier's daughters, was the secretary to Werner von Braun for several years.

Nothing illustrated the burgeoning collaboration between space scientists and the creators of science fiction better than the March 22, 1952 issue of Colliers magazine, whose cover was graced by a Bonestell painting of von Braun's three-stage launch vehicle.

After World War II, German rocket scientists emigrated to America and the Soviet Union, whose governments coveted their expertise. One German scientist, Wernher von Braun, took a leading role in America's space program, and following the logic of former GRS colleagues and science-fiction writers, he decided that a space station was an essential first step in conquering space. In the March 22, 1952 issue of Collier's magazine, von Braun and other scientists contributed articles describing and advocating construction of an American space station. Illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell and others, this issue publicized the wheel or doughnut shaped design that became the most popular image of the space station, most memorably displayed in Stanly Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Impressed by the articles in Collier's, science fiction writers began promoting the space station as a necessary base for further expeditions into space. Novels like Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky (1952) celebrated the people who built and inhabited space stations, and space stations began to appear in science fictions films such as Project Moonbase (1953) and Conquest of Space (1955).