In the 1955 film Conquest of Space, an installation–if we can use that word–called The Wheel orbits the Earth:

As in Project Moonbase and in many subsequent movies, this space station serves in part as a way-station for travelers outbound, in this case to Mars. One detail about life on The Wheel is the food, which apparently retains flavor and presumably nutritional value, but forgoes much of the “experience” of a planetside meal.

One of this film’s tag lines–See how it will happen…in your lifetime!–is worth some consideration. It was probably a combination of both marketing bluster and genuine sense of possibility, though this was well before the actual Space Race proper. Nearly seventy years later, we’re still well short of this vision of the future. But a good deal of exploration has been directed towards Mars…so who knows. Maybe in our lifetimes, at least, people will travel there.