Aerospace pioneer Patrick Rodi, the director Rice's Professional Master of Mechanical Engineering Aerospace track, presented two technical papers on his latest design for a "capsule waverider" spacecraft at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AAIA) Aviation Forum, a virtual event Aug. 2-6. The capsule waverider makes a fiery atmospheric entry like a space capsule before flipping onto its belly and riding its own shockwave as a hypersonic glider. Rodi debuted his sleek design at the AIAA conference in 2020, and this year presented an evaluation of the capsule waverider as a Mars lander as well as a study examining optimized shapes for boost-glide missions on Earth.
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