Aerodynamic studies have been directed to investigating the design requirements associated with the unique operational flight profile of the space shuttle system. The flight regimes include launch; stage separation, orbital operations, entry, transition, cruise and landing. Aerodynamic configurations have been developed by interpreting the mission requirements in terms of required or desired aerodynamic characteristics. Analyses of configuration effects have been performed to obtain these characteristics. In many cases, experimental data has been obtained to either substantiate analytic trends or to provide basic data where the problem is not amenable to analysis
