Lifetime of achievement for Rutan

Aviator gets honor for contributing to industry

Famed aviator Dick Rutan has piloted a wide variety of aircraft during his more than six decades of flying civil and military aircraft, from F-100 jets over Vietnam to a rocket-powered airplane, one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft to homebuilts and even balloons.

Of all these, however, it is the unique and historic Voyager that holds a special place in his memories.

It’s his favorite plane not because of how it handled or what it was like to fly, “but for what it did,” he said.

Rutan, 82, shared tales of the Voyager and its 1986 record-setting, non-refueled around-the-world flight with aviation artist, historian and author Mike Machat as part of a ceremony to honor Rutan with the Howard Hughes Award from the Aero Club of Southern California.

The discussion was recorded earlier this year and streamed online for the virtual ceremony Thursday.

“The flight of the Voyager started with three people over a steak teriyaki lunch in a crummy little desert town known as Mojave,” Rutan said. At the time, in the early 1980s, he was a test pilot for his younger brother Burt’s Rutan Aircraft Factory there.

“My brother is the most innovative and creative and far-thinker than anybody that I have ever met,” he said. When Dick and his then-girlfriend Jeana Yeager suggested Burt design an aerobatic airplane for them, Burt countered with something momentous instead.

Burt believed the advent of a new building material, carbon fiber composites, made it possible to build an airplane light enough to carry the fuel to fly nonstop around the world. The feat was “the last first in aviation,” he said.

“The unique thing about the Voyager is there wasn’t a couple of billionaires that stood up with a whole bunch of money,” Rutan said, but rather an idea brought to fruition by a small army of dedicated volunteers and donated goods.

Anticipated sponsorships did not come through, so “we had to build this airplane ourselves,” he said. “I

laid up almost every single strand of carbon fiber in that airplane.”

Construction took about two years, and flight testing another two-and-a-half years before the historic flight.

It was the thought of all the hours of work and dedication of those volunteers that helped drive Rutan to go ahead and take off on the cold morning of Dec. 14, 1986, on Edwards Air Force Base’s storied runway.

Rutan recalled thinking of the enormous risks in the flight ahead in an airplane that did not handle well and had never been flown at the weight it now held, carrying the fuel needed to propel him and co-pilot Yeager around the world.

“It finally dawned on me that this is crazy,” he said, and thought about just walking away from it. “Then I look out at all those volunteers.”

They took off, then “we put W in the compass and we sat there for a week and a half,” he said.

After a sometimes harrowing journey, Rutan and

Yeager touched down on the same runway nine days and some 25,000 miles later to cheering crowds and a place in the record books. They were presented with the Presidential Citizen’s Medal of Honor by President Ronald Reagan four days later.

The Howard Hughes Award, named for the record-setting pilot and aviation magnate perhaps best known for his flying boat dubbed the “Spruce Goose,” was established in 1978 and is awarded annually to “honor exceptional leaders who have advanced the fields of aviation or aerospace technology,” according to the club’s website.

Rutan is “an American Hero,” Aero Club President William Withycombe said, and was chosen for the award in recognition of “his impressive aviation accomplishments in both civil and military fields.”

In addition to his accomplishments in the air, Rutan was honored for his activities including a scholarship fund “which has gifted many thousands of dollars to young scholars.”

“He remains highly active in the world of aviation and is a true legend,” Withycombe said.

Rutan was presented with a solid silver medallion, cast using silver from Hughes’ Nevada mine. His name is also engraved on the permanent trophy.

Previous recipients include Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, James Lovell and Pete Conrad; aircraft designers Jack Northrop and Kelly Johnson; pilots Gen. Chuck Yeager, General Jimmy Doolittle and Bob Hoover; and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Rutan’s brother, aircraft designer Burt Rutan, was honored with the award in 2005.

The Aero Club of Southern California was founded in 1908 to increase the public’s awareness of aviation. Today, its work includes scholarships for students studying aviation and aerospace.

During Thursday’s virtual ceremony, the club also presented this year’s scholarship winners, five college and two high school students pursuing studies in aviation and aerospace.