Hello All,

An unusual type of rocket glider (RG) that came up in the thread on break-apart recovery (see: http://www.oldrocketforum.com/showt...63&page=1&pp=10 ) is the "Backslider," a long and narrow rocket that ejects its nose cone (still attached to the rocket body via a shock cord) and glides to Earth backwards (tail-first).

While looking up online information on the rockets built and flown by Dr. Robert H. Goddard (who also noted similar behavior in his L-16 "movable casing rocket"), I came across an illustrated report that Peter Alway and his brother Robert wrote (see: http://www.info-central.org/?article=276 ) about Super Roc Rocket Gliders. In addition to analyzing the design parameters of such tail-first gliding nose-blow recovery rockets, they also investigated similar models that had no moving parts and used asymmetrically-vented ejection charge gases to initiate their tail-first glide mode.

I hope this information will be useful.

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