1. The renaissance of aerothermodynamics is a t hand, driven by forthcoming high-speed vehicle programs spanning the flight regime from hypersonic cruise to aeroassisted orbital transfer. NASA's aerothermodynamics program, which survived the drought of the 1970's on planetary entry technology development, has in the early 1980's undergone a resurgence of activity leading t o a broadening of program scope. With the significantly enhanced computational tools available and w i t h the highly augmented experimental data base i n place, NASA's aerothermodynamics expertise is well suited for the aerospace vehicle developments ahead. The entry technology programs of the 1960's spurred on by the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and focused by the Pioneer and Galileo planetary programs of the 1970's has produced a significantly augmented capability with considerably enhanced breadth and depth. These new capabilities span the spectrum of technoloqy from detailed computational chemical prediction/analysis of high temperature gas flows to the integrated design of aerospace vehicles. These capabilities have broadened the vistas of parametric analysis and w i l l ultimately enable the development of advanced aerospace vehicles of significantly improved effectiveness and efficiency.
2. Aeornautics, Vol. 21, No. 11, November 1983,
3. pp. 36-43.
4. AIAA Paper 83-0406, January 1983.