“…As a result of the more than 30 years of supersonic operational experience and 25 years of SST research and design studies, very sophisticated design approaches have been developed for slender supersonic configurations. 14 ' 15 Much less is known about how to optimize long-range hypersonic airplanes. Since this class of aircraft must accommodate strong shock waves, it has been suggested that a class of configurations, called waveriders, could be developed to exploit the flow characteristics of the strong shocks.…”