Nov 132011
 

In 1957, Darrell Romick of Goodyear produced the “Meteor Jr.”  design for a three stage fully reusable manned launch vehicle, a smaller version of the “Meteor” design from 1954. The designs were straightforward, with simple but gigantic delta wings.

The Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy facility has a Goodyear display model of the Meteor Jr. vehicle on display.

 Posted by at 11:13 am

  8 Responses to “Meteor Jr.”

  1. Staging would have been “exciting” for the 1st & 2nd stage crews. I presume the nose petals on those stages would lock together after staging?

  2. > the nose petals on those stages would lock together after staging?

    Yup. They’d better, at any rate… failure to do so would make hypersonic flight entertaining.

    • That is what I was getting at. It’s one thing when your A-10 slot-nose first stage is expendable, but a wee bit different if you expect to fly it home.

      Does anyone know if this concept went any further than a nice model, as in drawings or the like?

      To me it looks like someone taking the Von Braun Colliers articles and recycling them just beyond the bounds of copyright/trademark.

  3. Hi OBB,

    what a coincidence, this weekend I saw 2 pictures of a similar or even the same concept from Goodyear at the Flickr Fotostream from the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives.
    Links: :http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/6335602816/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/6335602942/

    Slán,
    fightingirish

  4. what is the identity of that dark grey rocket with “united states” letters next to the Meteor Jr model?

  5. Mid-century designers seemed to spend a lot of time coming up with ways to launch large wing segments into space, rather than payloads.

    Cool rocket, though: put a few more doodads on it and you could attribute it to Gerry Anderson.

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