Mentioned earlier in the thread Project Champion was another interesting concept of the time.
CHAMPION: NAVY INFLATABLE DESIGNS (Chp 8 From Rainbow to Gusto)
"On 14 August 1958, three weeks after his previous trip, (Clarence Kelly Johnson) Johnson was back at the program office to get the details of the Navy proposal. Under a Navy project named CHAMPION, Goodyear was proposing a reconnaissance vehicle having inflatable wings that could be rolled up while the vehicle was transported on an aircraft carrier and then inflated for launch (Interview with Sherre Lovick, Northridge, CA, 4 Feb. 2006). It was intended to be ramjet powered and to cruise at 125,000 to 150,000 ft. A balloon would lift it to altitude. Johnson made a quick calculation and decided that the balloon would have to be over a mile in diameter. He is said to have remarked, “Gentlemen, that’s a lot of hot air.” Goodyear’s propeller-driven Inflatoplane had already been flying for two years, but at a maximum speed of 72 miles per hour and at a maximum altitude of 10,000 ft. The Land Panel probably recognized that Goodyear was in a situation similar to Randolph Rae and Garrett, a builder of a small, simple aircraft proposing to build a large, complex aircraft to operate in a flight regime in which the company had no experience. Having an experienced company like Lockheed perform a sanity check on the concept was essential.