High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Rogallo wing is a flexible type of airfoil. In 1948, Gertrude Rogallo, and her husband Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the "Rogallo Wing" and flexible wing. NASA considered Rogallo`s flexible wing as an alternative recovery system for the Gemini space capsule and for possible use in other spacecraft landings, but the idea was dropped in 1964 in favor of parachutes.