Rutan Voyager - Design and Development

Design and Development

The aircraft was first imagined by Jeana Yeager, Dick and his brother Burt Rutan as they were at lunch in 1981. The initial idea was first sketched out on the back of a napkin. Voyager was built in Mojave, California, over a period of 5 years. The Voyager was built mainly by a group of volunteers working under both the Rutan Aircraft Factory and an organization set up under the name Voyager Aircraft.

The airframe, largely made of fiberglass, carbon fiber and Kevlar, weighed 939 pounds (426 kg) when empty. With the engines included, the unladen weight of the plane was 2250 lb (1020.6 kg). However, when it was fully loaded before the historic flight, it weighed 9,694.5 pounds (4,397 kg) due to the large amount of fuel required for the long-distance flight. The aircraft had an estimated lift to drag ratio (L/D) of 27. The canard and wing airfoils were custom designed and the aircraft was analyzed using computational fluid dynamics. Vortex generators were added to the canard, to reduce sensitivity to surface contamination.

Voyager had front and rear propellers, powered by separate engines. It was originally flown on June 22 1984 powered by Lycoming O-235 engines with fixed-pitch propellers. In November 1985, the aircraft was rolled out, fitted with the world-flight engines, an air-cooled Teledyne Continental O-240 in the forward location and a water-cooled Teledyne Continental IOL-200 in the aft location. Both were fitted with electrically-actuated MT-Propellers. The plan was for the rear engine to be operated throughout the flight. The front engine was intended to provide additional power for takeoff and the initial part of the flight at heavy weights.

On July 15, 1986, Dick and Jeana completed a test flight, off of the coast of California, in which they flew for 111 hours and 44 minutes, traveling 11,857 statute miles. The first attempt at this flight was marred by the failure of a propeller pitch change motor and they had to make an emergency landing at Vandenburg Air Force Base. On a test flight on September 29, 1986, the airplane had to make an emergency landing due to a propeller blade departing the aircraft. As a result, a decision was made to switch to Hartzell hydraulically-actuated propellers. In a crash program, Hartzell made custom propellers for the aircraft, which were first flown on November 15, 1986.