It was that magazine, publishing a series of articles by [who else?] Wernher Von Braun,
with Mr. Bonsell's famous artwork, back in 1952, showing the feasibility of manned spaceflight
and trips to the Moon and Mars which convinced the Cold War public that such plans were doable
that led to the creation of Project Vanguard in 1955, and the formation of NASA in 1958...and
ultimately led to Project Apollo [with a little provocation from Gagarin, Khrushchev and Korolev.]

The problem was?

Dr. Von Braun's vision of a systematic, evolutionary spaceprogram that starts with
"winged" reusable spacecraft, launched by 'reusable' Saturn/Nova class boosters,
towards a donut-shaped spacestation. 1000 miles up, where modular interplanetary
spacecraft with clusters of spherical fuel-tanks are assembled nearby to send men FIRST onto the moon
and then later onto Mars WAS FLAWED.
Upon inception in 1958 NASA bought into Dr. Von Braun's flawed vision hook line and sinker...and
even with NASA's "quick and dirty" approach to landing on the moon in Project Apollo, NASA never did
totally abandon Dr. Von Braun's flawed approach to spaceprogram development, even in times of shrinking budgets.
NASA abandoned the idea of a spinning, donut-shaped spacestation in the 1970's, but it held onto
the idea that a REUSABLE spaceplane [spaceglider] regularily servicing a huge space station in Earth orbit
was NECESSARY for assembling deepspace hardware meant to return men to the moon's surface [1980's space station FREEDOM agenda] and then later...onto Mars.

I still think NASA holds onto this outdated and discredited agenda
and concepts derived from the late Dr. Von Braun to this very day.