GAM-87 Skybolt

The GAM-87 Skybolt was an American air-launched ballistic missile developed from 1957 to 1959 and formally named in 1960, with Douglas Aircraft Company as prime contractor, Northrop supplying guidance, Aerojet providing propulsion, and General Electric developing the reentry vehicle. It was meant to let strategic bombers such as the B-52 and the Avro Vulcan launch from as much as 1,000 miles outside the range of Soviet air defenses, using a two-stage solid-fuel rocket motor to carry a thermonuclear warhead, initially the W47 and later the one-megaton W59, with a star tracker added to its inertial guidance system for mid-flight updates that required the missile to be carried externally so it could observe the sky. Flight testing began in 1962 and suffered repeated failures before the first successful flight in December 1962, and the program was cancelled that same month once submarine-launched ballistic missiles and internal Air Force strategy debates made it unnecessary. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/