Robert McCall has been recording this new age of exploration since its beginnings. All of his work celebrates our quest to understand and discover the universe we inhabit, but none more clearly than the images that follow, which document the first missions of the American space program.

Robert McCall's vision of our future here on Earth is of a world where technology and nature coexist in harmony and balance with each other. "Humanity has always continued to move forward," says McCall, "to learn more, to become more sophisticated. I see people building more beautiful cities and a more wonderful environment to live in - a very bright future for us all."

In the two past decades, however, McCall has been speculating about the possibilities of truly breaking the bonds of gravity. "When I first saw the wonderful flat-bottomed clouds it occurred to me that they looked very much like cities in the sky. So I started painting floating, gravity-free cities that were beyond today's technology but might be possible to build someday in the future."

"I think if you get a cosmic view, somehow you can perceive cosmic mankind," observes McCall. "I believe life is teeming throughout the universe, and you and I represent only an indescribably small bit of that life. I feel it helps us not to take ourselves so seriously if we have this broader concept."

-Ben Bova, Vice President and Editorial Director of Omni magazine