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He is most famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the suborbital rocket plane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period.
BiographyBorn in Estacada, Oregon, 30 miles southeast of Portland, and raised in Dinuba, California, Rutan displayed an early interest in aircraft design. By the time he was eight years old he was designing and building model aircraft. His first solo flight in a full scale plane was an Aeronca Champ in 1959, when he was sixteen. In 1965 he graduated third in his class from California Polytechnic University with an aeronautical engineering degree. From 1965 to 1972 Rutan worked for the U.S. Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base as a flight test project engineer, working on nine separate projects including fighter spin tests and the LTV XC-142 VSTOL transport. Shortly after, he became director of the Bede Test Center for Bede Aircraft, in Newton, Kansas, a position he held until 1974. Rutan struck out on his own in June of 1974 with the creation of the Rutan Aircraft Factory in the Mojave Desert, where he designed and developed prototypes for a number of aircraft, mostly homebuilt. His first design was the Rutan VariViggen, a two-seat pusher with a canard in front. The canard was later to become a standard feature in most Rutan designs. In April 1982, Burt Rutan founded Scaled Composites,LLC, which has become one of the world's pre-eminent aircraft design and prototyping facilities. Scaled Composites is headquartered in Mojave, California. Rutan is married to Tonya Rutan, his fourth wife.
Air and space craft designs
VoyagerOver the years Burt Rutan has designed hundreds of aircraft, including the now-famous Voyager, which was piloted by Dick, his brother, and Jeana Yeager in 1986 on a record-breaking nine-day non-stop flight around the world. It has the honor of hanging in the Milestones of Flight exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) main exhibit hall, with the Wright Flyer, Spirit of St. Louis and Bell X-1.
HomebuiltsHis first design, the VariViggen, which he began building in his garage in 1968, made its first flight in April 1972. It had the rear wing, forward canard, and pusher configuration design elements which became his trademarks. That design lead to the very successful Rutan VariEze and Rutan Long-EZ homebuilt experimental aircraft designs, in which he pioneered the use of glass reinforced plastic construction in homebuilts. In 1975 his brother Dick set a world record in the under-500 kg (1100 lb) class in the VariEze, and these aircraft went on to set and still hold many world records in this class. They were also the first aircraft to fly with NASA developed winglets.
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