Voyager Project
Following military service, Dick headed an aircraft company with his brother Burt Rutan. It was during a 1981 lunch meeting at California's Mojave Inn that the Voyager project was conceived: Dick and Jeana Yeager met with Burt Rutan to discuss their idea of starting an aviation company. During lunch, they spoke of creating an aircraft that could fly nonstop around the world. Burt, an aircraft designer, sketched on a napkin the plane design that would enable Dick and Jeana Yeager to break the flight distance record of 12,532 miles (20,168 kilometers) set by a B-52 Stratofortress bomber in 1962. To realize Burt's design, they assembled a team of more than 50 and refined — over the next six years — Burt's original design, a process which included testing and studying a variety of lightweight materials. The team eventually selected a combination of graphite, fiberglass, and Kevlar for Voyager's main structure. The flight weight of its gasoline was approximately 9 times that of Voyager's final structure.
Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager took off in Voyager on December 14, 1986 from Edwards Air Force Base's 15,000-foot (4,600 m) runway. They struggled throughout the flight with weather, poor visibility of clouds and mountains, at night stress, sleep deprivation, a failing engine cooling water pump, and the continuing demand to exactly manage fuel. They were even denied access to the airspace above Libya. Finally, after 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds of flight, and a harrowing extended sudden stoppage of their engine power as they flew up the California coast, they touched down on December 23 with only a few gallons of fuel remaining. The 24,986-mile (40,211 km) trip yielded Rutan and Yeager numerous awards.
Read more about this topic: Dick Rutan
Famous quotes containing the words voyager and/or project:
“What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Oh Death he is a little man,
And he goes from do’ to do’ ...”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)