Goodyear Meteor Junior

The Goodyear Meteor Junior was a paper design for a fully reusable crewed spacecraft and launch system, drawn up in 1954 by Darrell C. Romick and two colleagues at Goodyear Aerospace, the aircraft and defense arm of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. It was shown at the annual conference of the American Rocket Society, years before any person had flown in space. The plan called for three winged stages stacked in a column, each with its own landing gear and crew, so that every stage could glide back to a runway and fly again; only the top stage, carrying the crew of three, was meant to reach orbit, where it would stay for about two months. The craft was reckoned at 142 feet long and 500 tons, too massive for its day, yet it was an early picture of a reusable shuttle and drew popular attention in a 1957 Popular Science article. A model is held by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It was never built.