His brother Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer who designed the spindly Voyager, was at his bedside. Rutan was 85. After 20 years in the Air Force, Dick Rutan joined his younger brother’s Mojave ...

Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, the Rutan Model 76 Voyager had just completed its non-stop flight around the world after taking off from that very same runway just over nine days prior.

Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, the Rutan Model 76 Voyager had just completed its non-stop flight around the world after taking off from that very same runway just over nine days prior.

The cover of the August 6, 1984 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology shows the Rutan Voyager in its flight test phase. Designed by Burt Rutan for Voyager Aircraft Co., the two-place composite ...

For nine days in December 1986, Dick Rutan and co-pilot Jeana Yeager lived out of a cabin the size of a phone booth, flying an experimental plane nonstop around the world. Their aircraft, the ...

In 1986, Rutan piloted Voyager around the world with no stops in nine days. Col. Douglas Wickert said he often used the Voyager flight during his time as a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

the design of the Rutan craft, the Voyager, was first sketched by Burt Rutan on a napkin at a Chinese restaurant in the desert town of Mojave in 1981. The advent of a new material, composites of ...

The project took six years. There was plenty to worry Mr Rutan during testing of the light graphite plane, Voyager. There were mechanical failures, any one of which would have been disastrous over ...

He was 85. Credit: AP/Jake Schoellkopf Voyager left from Edwards Air Force Base in California just after 8 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1986. Rutan said with all that fuel, the wings had only inches of clearance.

“Dick never doubted whether my design would actually make it around, with still some gas in the tank,” Burt Rutan said. Voyager left from Edwards Air Force Base in California just after 8 a.m ...