TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/86/86capts.16

Text File | 1990-12-04 | 8KB | 131 lines

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««Voyager's Flight of Fancy

December 29, 1986

Voyager makes a quaint quest for immortality

White and delicate, high tech yet oddly primitive, the plane looks
like some elegant insect or a sleek, latter-day pterodactyl.  With
her reedlike central wing slicing across three slender cylinders, she
might have been designed by an austere modern sculptor rather than an
aeronautical engineer.  In an age of space travel and supersonic
flight, her mission is a throwback to a different kind of odyssey:
to fly not faster, but longer.  Not higher, but farther.  Voyager is
a flight of fancy, of quaint possibility.

A round-the-world flight without stopping and without refueling is
one of the last firsts of atmospheric aviation.  Perhaps because such
a feat had become almost an anachronism, not one before had tried to
accomplish it.  The flight was always considered impossible because
no plane could carry enough fuel to take it 23,000 miles.  But last
week, while the attention of the nation was directed toward
weightier, more dispiriting matters in Washington, Voyager sailed
over the Pacific, over Africa and into a South Atlantic, more than
halfway home, offering the world a needed distraction.  Voyager's
journey called to mind Charles Lindbergh's daring solo flight across
the Atlantic in 1927, and last week the Lone Eagle's widow was
tracking the plane's progress.  "I am holding my breath for them,"
said Anne Morrow Lindbergh of the crew.  "What they are doing takes
great courage and faith."

The mission came about through the faith of three principals:  the
two pilots, Dick Rutan, 48, and Jeana Yeager, 34; and Rutan's brother
Burt, 43, who designed the plane.  Burt Rutan, one of the U.S.'s most
innovative designers, is president of his own firm, Rutan Aircraft
Factory; Dick is a gaunt and prickly pilot par excellence, much
decorated for his 325 combat missions in Viet Nam, who had been
chafing as a test flyer for his younger brother; Yeager, Dick's
constant companion, is a shy, petite former engineering-design
draftsman who holds nine world flight records after just ten years at
the controls.  (She is no relation to Test Pilot Chuck Yeager, who
went out of his way to belittle the mission in a quote to U.P.I.;
"The Voyager is old technology.  It's not a breakthrough.")  Voyager
began, as have so many fine notions, as a hurried sketch on a paper
napkin.  Five years ago the three were sitting in a greasy spoon in
Mojave, Calif., when Burt Rutan turned to his brother and asked, "How
would you like to be the first person to fly around the world without
stopping to refuel?"  The idea seized the test pilot.  Burt dashed
off a rudimentary drawing of a flying fuel tank--which is precisely
what Voyager is--and they were off.

Over the next five years, the three set out to raise enough money to
design, build and fly Voyager.  The project took shape in Hangar 77
at Mojave Airport; the plane was put together by dedicated volunteers
and a few paid workers who were determined to assemble a dream.  Dick
Rutan became the driving force; two years ago he bought out his
brother's half interest in the plane.  He is proud that the group is
accomplishing its mission without one cent of Government money.

But the five-year odyssey almost came to grief on takeoff last week.
As the plane lumbered down 14,000 ft. of runway at Edwards Air Force
Base, gathering speed for its ascent, the elongated wings, weighted
down with fuel, scraped along the tarmac.  Eighteen inches was
sheared off the right wing, 16 off the left.  The pilots quickly
donned emergency parachutes.  "I guess I blew it," Rutan confessed
sheepishly over the air-to-ground radio.  But as the plane circled
the base twice, it shook off its damaged winglets.  Voyager was
pronounced unharmed and airworthy.

That was just the beginning of a bumpy ride.  Rutan and Yeager were
buffeted by rough weather from the southern Pacific to central
Africa.  The plan was to fly in the Southern Hemisphere, but weather
conditions kept Voyager north of the equator.  The wings, spanning
111 ft., are designed to flap some 30 ft., and the pilots must ride
the roller coaster.  Rutan stayed in the pilot' seat for nearly all
of the first 24 hours and all but six of the next 24.  Only on
Wednesday did the duo begin their planned cycles of work and rest.
On Thursday, over the Indian Ocean, Voyager surpassed the previous
record of 12,532 miles for nonstop unrefueled flight, set in 1962 by
a specially designed B-52 bomber.  Although the Voyager was thought
to be low on fuel, a test over Kenya suggested that she had more than
enough go make it back to Edwards.  By Saturday night the craft was
edging close to South America.

The plane's airy freedom contrasts sharply with the pilots' cramped
conditions.  Rutan and Yeager are squeezed into a bathtub-size cabin
2 ft. wide and 7 1/2 ft. long.  The passenger lies head to toe
alongside the pilot, who sits half upright.  Discomfort is
accompanied by deafening noise:  when both engines are running, the
in-flight roar can exceed 100 decibels, louder than the sound in the
first row of a Twisted Sister concert, requiring earplugs and an
electronic noise-dampening device.

Water, as much as fuel, is essential to the mission's success.
Voyager carried 90 lbs. of it for the two pilots to drink.  The plane
was packed with precooked dinners (lasagna, chicken a'la king, beef
stew) that could be warmed by an interior heating duct, as well as
liquid instant meals that are made by adding water.  Despite the
discomfort, Rutan is pretty much at home inside the cockpit.  After a
4 1/2-day test mission last July, when Voyager flew 11,600 miles up
and down the California coast, Rutan said, "After two days, you can
go for 30, you can go for 40.  The humanoid adapts very well."

Voyager is more than a testament to inspiration and dedication.  The
flight will also test the practicality of Burt Rutan's use of
composite materials.  The plane's shell is built of quarter-inch-
thick panels of Hexcel honeycomb, a resin-coated, paperlike polymer
covered with graphite fibers embedded in epoxy.  Voyager's composite
is 20% lighter and seven times s tough as aluminum, the material of
choice for most modern planes.  The only metal found on the body of
the craft is the nuts and bolts along the wings.  Says Dick:
"History, ten years from now, will look back on this time and see
that we made a big change, like in the '30s when we went from wooden-
tube-and-fabric airplanes to aluminum.  We found a new way of making
airplanes."

Voyager is trundling along at an average 110 miles an hour, an almost
Victorian pace by jet-age standards.  (Lindbergh's average cruising
speed was 107 m.p.h.)  While contemporary travel makes the world a
smaller place as the Concorde zips from New York to Paris in less
than four hours, the flight of Voyager seems to restore the planet to
its full, true grandeur.  Even if the plane does not make it all the
way back, Yeager says, she will still feel a sense of achievement.
"If we made the attempt and something happened to the airplane," she
said, "I would be satisfied that we at least tried."  But Rutan is
hell-bent for immortality.  As he circles the planet, the names
circling in his head are Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.  He too aims
to fly into history's blue yonder.  "Milestones," Rutan says, "are
something that can never be broken."

--By Richard Stengel.
  Reported by Scott Brown/Mojave