While James Van Allen was flying Rockoons suspended from high-altitude balloons. , the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (N.A.C.A., NASA’s predecessor) was flying Deacons with boosters from a Nike missile.
Engineers at the University of Michigan brought these two ideas together to solve the problem of inexpensive multiple atmospheric measurements.
The Nike-Deacon was a mix of off-the-shelf solid rocket motors (Nike and Deacon)and an assortment of parts fabricated especially for the two-stage combination.
The Nike-Deacon could loft 50 pounds to an altitude of 50 to 100 miles for much less than the cost of an Aerobee. This fact guaranteed the Nike-Deacon, and its successors, the Nike Cajun and Nike-Apache, a place in upper atmosphere and space research for decades.