Burt Rutan: Icon of Homebuilding…And Space Travel

By David Gustafson

Burt Rutan’s list of airplanes designed and flown (45), of honorary

Doctoral Degrees (6!), of national and international awards (112…

not counting the milk drinking contest he won at the age of 12),

of patents held (7), and of design projects related to aviation in

some way (several hundred) takes up 11 pages! This all occurred

in the years between 1965, when he graduated from California Polytechnic University, and his retirement

from Scaled Composites in April, 2011. It includes a work schedule that would have crippled most people:

escalating over the forty-six years he spent in the high desert to six or seven days a week, 8 to 16 hours a

day. Vacation time was rare. “I think the main reason is there wasn’t much to do in Mojave. I kept my head

down and my elbows up and I worked like hell.” When he retired, he found “with a clear calendar, I could

sleep in and then decide on a given day what I would do after I woke up. That concept was so foreign to

me that it was absolutely amazing. I still haven’t gotten used to it.” He’s still looking for the “off” switch.

In his lifetime he went from model airplanes to rocket science,

from homebuilts to transports, from internationally recognized projects

like the Voyager and Spaceship One to classified stuff we will probably

never know about. He changed the culture of aviation.

Burt evolved into an unusual blend of scientist and artist. He was

able to visualize airflow in ways the rest of us can’t, and he knew how to
direct that flow through the laws of physics. His airframes, especially the

fuselages, were the most radical and graceful exhibits of sculpture ever

Voyager Aircraft Program seen in the air before. Burt is a sort of industrial sculptor that guys like
Burt Rutan shows his pride in a hangar
at Edwards AFB after the successful Rodin would have admired. Spaceship One and The White Knight belong in
landing of the Voyager on December
23, 1986. The Voyager was a unique
aircraft designed by engineer Burt
an art museum as much as the National Air and Space Museum.
Rutan to fly around the world non-stop
and non-refueled. The craft piloted The late Jack Cox, editor of Sport Aviation from 1970 to 1999, wrote
by Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager
achieved its milestone goal in Decem- his last article for that magazine in April, 2011, focusing on Burt’s early
ber 1986 after flying around the world
in slightly over 9 days. years. He characterized Burt’s supersonic mind and Über werkethik this

way: “If thinking outside the box and turning that thinking into successful
 ventures and products is a mark of genius, then Burt Rutan, EAA Lifetime

26033, has claim many times over to that distinction. No other individual

in the history of aviation has designed as many aircraft…radically different

aircraft…and had them built and flown.”

Burt’s fascination with aviation began as a young man. In high

school he ignored kits and began designing one-off models experimenting

with different configurations. A local hobby shop owner, whose day job
A very young Burt Rutan with one was laying bricks, began taking Burt and some of his buddies in Dinuba,
of his scratchbuild model air-
planes...it was his passion through
high school.
California, to competitions in San

Francisco every other weekend.

At age 17, his mother trucked

Burt and 11 of the unique aircraft

models he had designed and built

Burt with a model he created for to an AMA national convention in Burt’s first experiment with a canard
endurance.
Dallas. Burt came home with a few

trophies. In 1961, he went off to California

Polytechnic University to pursue a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. While

there, an idea germinated in his fertile imagination, following a research

project he did on the virtues of canards. Intrigued with the anti-stall, anti-

spin characteristics of the canard configuration, and enamored with the Saab

Viggen, he began sketching out his first homebuilt: the two-seat, tandem

VariViggen. It was to be built out of wood and

metal. He conducted wind tunnel tests on the Variviggen Car Tunnel Model, show-
ing the instruments to measure the
concept at Cal Poly in 1964, but didn’t begin effect of wind.

building it until 1968. Finished in 1972, Burt

flew it to Oshkosh where he won the Stan Dzik Design Contribution Trophy.

It was probably the first canard pusher to show up at Oshkosh and it created

quite a stir when it got there. Delightfully nicknamed the “Thunder Chicken”,

it was Burt’s answer to the fighter pilot wannabe complex that he developed

Burt’s first job out of University was during the years 1965 – 1972, while he was working at Edwards Air Force
at Edwards Air Force Base.
Base and taking trips in fighter aircraft…in the back seat…as a test engineer.
“The fascination of having my own fighter, which would allow me to sit in the

front and have my hand on the throttle, provided the major reason for doing

the VariViggen.” Burt had joined EAA in 1965 and while he was working for

the Air Force, he joined EAA Chapter 49, but he had to put off the start of

construction because he was working seven days a week and had no spare

time. What little time he did have went into the construction of another

wind tunnel model of the VariViggen, but this was after Cal Poly and he had
The car Top Variviggen model ready
for the automotive wind tunnel.
no wind tunnel. So he used his car, mounting the model above the roof of

his Dodge Dart. It was an articulating mount with instruments. Driving down

roads, he was able to simulate a wind tunnel of his own making. He then built an RC model of the VariViggen

and flew that shortly before flying his completed homebuilt. That happened late in 1971 while he was in St.

Louis supporting the F-15 program.

In the summer of ‘71 he had made his first trip to

Oshkosh. It’s funny to think about Burt Rutan wandering

around the Oshkosh flightline, unrecognized. That would

change the following year when he introduced his VariViggen.

That same

year, after returning

to Lancaster and his

Burt in the early phase of building the first VariViggen. work at Edwards, he

encountered one of

those life-changing experiences that would take him in a very different

direction. A designer/kitmaker named Jim Bede came through nearby

Fox Field and members of the local EAA chapter encouraged Burt to

meet Jim. He did. He showed Jim pictures of his VariViggen, which

was nearing completion. Someone had already told Jim about Burt,
Burt with the VariViggen

and, knowing that Burt was involved in flight testing at Edwards

Air Force Base, Jim offered Burt a job as his Chief Flight Test Pilot. Burt told Jim that he needed a Chief of

Experimental Tests, adding “I know how to do that. I’m a professional flight test guy and I could organize and

run your flight test program. Jim was planning on introducing other aircraft and I told him he could get pilots

anywhere, but what he really needed was someone to put together a testing organization. I was looking for
 a job, knowing it would probably only last about a year. I planned to return

to Edwards within a year to hold onto the benefits associated with that job.

I didn’t like the BD-5, but I went to work for him with the idea that I would

have fun and learn.”

Burt was also formulating a plan that might lead him into the

homebuilt kit business. The idea occurred to him after he had read

about Bede’s plans to sell the BD-5 kit. He sketched out the concept for a
Burt Rutan in a BD5 MiniViggen (single-seater) for which Burt would create a kit that could be

added onto a BD-5 kit. As long as Jim could sell his BD-5 kits, Burt expected

he would have no objections to the concept. “I figured it would be a win/win situation for both him and

me.” The MiniViggen would be the size of a BD-5 (considerably smaller than the VariViggen), but it would

be transformed into a canard airplane. So before Burt went to work for Jim, he ordered his own BD-5 kit,

thinking he would lay out his design and change the BD-5 into a MiniViggen. “And if it flew well, I would

go into the kit business.” As it turned out, Bede never did deliver the BD-5 kit as the total package he had

advertised; not to Burt or anyone else. It became one of the biggest scandals in the homebuilt movement.

Burt managed to avoid the scandal. He functioned as the principal designer on the BD-5 Jet

and the trainer that was mounted in front of, and attached to, a truck for assisting pilots with transition

training. He wound up staying with Bede longer than the one year he had planned on. During the two

summers he was there, Burt brought his VariViggen to Oshkosh, where he attracted large crowds. In early

1974 after leaving Bede, “I decided I would bite the bullet and try to make a business…the same kind of

business that Bede was running, but I would do it without taking deposits before I had something to sell. I

had learned some of the business mistakes Bede made, and if it wasn’t for those experiences, I would have

made some of those same mistakes. It was clear that he was digging a hole that he couldn’t get out of. He

was actually selling kits for less than it cost him to buy the materials. Then he got distracted and kind of

abandoned the homebuilders. I decided it was going to fail in just a handful of months and I didn’t want to

be a part of the people who got the black eye. So I decided ‘I’m out of here.’”

Knowing he had a marketable product in the VariViggen, Burt moved back to California. “I didn’t

especially want to make plans for the VariViggen because it was really hard to build.” However, he began

shipping out plans and started machining some of the more challenging parts of the design. To assure a

minimal level of security, Burt borrowed $15,000 from his dad. But first he had to find a place to establish
his business. It had to be cheap. He needed a hangar for his VariViggen, a shop for making plans and parts,

and a home for a family of four.

Los Angeles was out because the high cost of hangars and shop space. He borrowed his uncle’s

Ercoupe and went down to Brown Field on the Mexican border, then looked at Montgomery, Ramona, Flabob

and a host of others. He was shocked by the prices people were asking. “Once I got to Mojave, I found this

old, nearly abandoned airport with a few run down wooden buildings on it and the hangar rent was almost

nothing and the shop rent was almost nothing, because they had all this empty space. I found a house

nearby that had a low enough price and so it turned out that Mojave was the first place I’d found where I

thought I could survive on cost. The other thing was that it was close to Edwards, and if my business failed I

could always try to get my old job back with the Air Force.”

After parking his VariViggen in the corner of an old

wooden hangar for $15/month, Burt moved into Building 13,

which was about a hundred yards back from the flightline. He

put up a sign: Rutan Aircraft Factory. It was a large building, far

bigger than what he needed to develop his next aircraft, the

VariEze. So he partitioned off about a third of it, hung some

insulation on the partitions and sublet the other two-thirds of

the building for twice the amount he was paying for the entire
Burt Rutan at his drawing table in the building. This meant he had a free office and shop facility.
Pre-CAD days.
“That’s called survival.”

Of course, survival requires more than a workspace. There has to be a viable product. At $27 a set,

for VariViggen plans, Burt had income, but knew it would be a losing battle. “I didn’t see a viable business

selling plans or kits for the VariViggen. People were fascinated by how cool it looked and how it could make

tight turns at full aft stick. It was a fun airplane to fly, for sure, and I enjoyed giving airshows at Oshkosh in

’73 and ’74, but it was horribly difficult to build. It was mixture of metal and spruce and birch plywood, it had

complicated controls and an electric retractable landing gear. I could see that there was a small audience,

who had the skills and patience to build one, but clearly if I was going make a business out of selling plans

and kits, I had to have something that was easier to build and wider in appeal.”

Burt liked the configuration of the VariViggen, found it fun to fly, was impressed with the stall-proof

nature of the canard, but was disappointed in its performance and efficiency. He focused on producing a new
 version of it that would be considerably easier and quicker to build. The VariEze was born.

During Burt’s University days, RC modelers began experimenting with foam core wings. They had

mastered the technique of carving or hot-wire cutting of foam wing cores and covering them with balsa

wood skins. Burt had heard of the technology. When he was working for Jim Bede and living in Valley

Center, Kansas, he began experimenting with foam and fiberglass, producing elevators for his MiniViggen.

“I became enthralled with the process. It took me a very short time to build. I walked away from it and the

next morning it had cured and was ready for use. It was smoother and nicer than aluminum. I didn’t have

to pound out ribs, didn’t have to use clecos…I was really jazzed by this.”

A few hundred yards from Burt’s new location, Building 13, was an operation called Fred Jiran’s

Glider Repair. Fred was European and had familiarity with the sailplanes that were being produced in

Germany and Switzerland. It was a technology

that was still in its infancy in America. These

sailplanes were produced in tooling that utilized

vacuum bagging of fiberglass impregnated with

resin. Carved foam was then set inside the upper

and lower surfaces of the wings. When they were

dinged in an accident, Fred would shape foam to

One of the prototype wings for the VariEze.
fill the hole and then lay new fiberglass over it. He

didn’t need tooling to fix wings. These “moldless”

repairs inspired Burt. He began to conceive of his

VariEze as an all-composite aircraft.

One of Fred’s employees, Gary Morris,

an artist and a craftsman, began going over to

Burt’s shop after work to see what was going on.

The first VariEze in the early stage of construction. He pitched in, offering much needed help to Burt

and was offering suggestions on how work with fiberglass. Burt

asked Gary to keep the project a secret, in case something went wrong with it. Gary worked for food as

Burt couldn’t afford any wages, but decided to buy dinner if they worked late enough. Initially, Burt was

thinking of hand-carving the foam cores for the wings, but then he struck on the idea of cutting large blocks

of foam with a hot wire, just like what was being done with small RC models, using templates at each end.
Bingo! This eliminated the need for tooling and dramatically reduced the time required to complete a wing.

For the fuselage, he laid sheets of foam (1’ or 2” thick) on a table, carved various depressions of them

and skinned them with fiberglass. Those sheets became the sides and bottom of the fuselage with their

skins being the fuselage inside surfaces. The three sides were bonded together around a few bulkheads,

creating a square box with an open top. The plexiglass canopy and frame would later be the fuselage top.

The outside surfaces were then carved down to the corners, resulting in a rounded external shape. The

big structural advantage would be the outside skin, which could be

one continuous fiberglass layup all around, without fasteners or

secondary bonds. Thus, the Rutan aircraft Factory created an entirely

new way of fabricating airplanes. It was now possible to build up an

airframe without expensive tooling and in very little time. Hand tools

amounted to little more than a pair of scissors, a sharp knife, a paint

Burt seen conducting an early workshop on brush and some sandpaper.

hotwire/foam cutting techniques.
Burt started his VariEze, N7EZ, in February of 1975, intent on

making the Oshkosh Fly-In that summer. He got there. He had finished

the first VariEze in 3.5 months. It was smaller, leaner and could go faster and farther than the Variviggen.

Jack Cox had visited the Rutan Aircraft Factory in early May, 1975, took pictures of the project and then ran

an article in Sport Aviation he called “VariViggen Vignette,” in which he introduced the VariEze concept and

the new process of building aircraft out of composites. Jack followed that up with a bunch of photos of the

completed VariEze, priming the EAA Fly-In for a revolution.

It wasn’t uncommon in those days to see four to eight new

designs at Oshkosh every year. Innovation was a way of life at the

Convention. But nothing had ever compared with the introduction of

the VariEze. The buzz among homebuilders when the aircraft first flew

over the Oshkosh airport was punctuated with gasps and more than a
Burt in the prototype VariEze few salty phrases. This was the beginning of a revolution and everyone

knew it.

Aside from the unusual shape, presaged two years earlier by the VariViggen, the VariEze had no

moving parts on the wing. The rudders were mounted on the trailing edge of the new winglets, a concept
developed by Richard Whitcomb. Burt was the first designer to use winglets. The elevators, which Burt called

elevons, were attached to the trailing edge of the canard, with control levers about two feet from the stick.

The elevons moved up and down to control pitch, but also operated differentially, as ailerons. To accommodate

entry and egress, Burt had designed a crank system that raised and lowered the nosewheel. None of these

features had ever been seen before. The fact that Burt had put it all together in less than four months just blew

peoples’ minds.

According to his plan, Burt wouldn’t take any orders that first year. His brother, Dick, had flown the

aircraft from Mojave to Oshkosh, but had to make a forced landing enroute due to an engine failure. John

Monnett graciously offered to replace the Volkswagen engine in the prototype with one of his own and worked

all night to get the plane ready for a closed-course endurance record.

After the convention, Burt flew N7EZ back to Mojave and experienced a

second engine failure. That soured him on using Volkswagen powerplants.

He got home and began to think seriously about what he was doing. He

made the decision to not sell plans for the Volkswagen-powered N7EZ (it

is on display in the EAA Museum). He built and tested another prototype

The Defiant (closest), the VariEze and Mike
Melville’s VariViggen. VariEze, a bigger one that

would use a certified

aircraft engine. The new

aircraft, N4EZ, formed the basis for the homebuilder’s plans-built

airplanes. It used a Continental 0-200, 100 hp engine. N4EZ is now

on display in the Air and Space Museum’s Dulles facility.

People began sending money in, even though he didn’t

Burt has held forums every year he’s been at
yet have anything to sell. After his experience with Jim Bede,
Oshkosh. You can guess which tent he was in
Burt had resolved never to accept money until he had a product for this forum.

that was fully flight tested and complete. He sent the peoples’

money back, refusing to take any deposits until a month before Oshkosh ’76. At that time, he put the word out

to the thousands of people who had subscribed to his quarterly newsletter (this was before the internet and

websites). A couple days after sending out his newsletter, announcing the availability of plans, some guy flew

in from San Diego in a Cessna 182 and paid for a hundred sets of plans. He took a full third of Burt’s inventory

of plans and grossed out his Skylane with them. Then he took off and flew back to an eager bunch of builders,
who couldn’t wait to get started on their own VariEze.

“On that one day, I made enough money to survive for a full year.”

Burt started selling plans at $125 a set. In the first year of the

VariEze’s existence he went to the bank with $750,000 that came in from

plans sales and royalties from kit sales. Burt took home less than $8,000,

preferring to put the rest back into RAF and future developments. He began

paying Gary Morris a salary and hired one other employee.

Jim Irwin, president of Aircraft Spruce, remembers Burt visiting his

office in the spring of 1975 to talk about materials kits. Jim listened politely

but had no way of knowing what was coming. For that matter, neither did

Burt. The foam began arriving at the old Aircraft Spruce facility by truck, then LongEZ flown through one of those
YeeeeeHAh!!! maneuvers.
by train load. It flew out as

fast as it was trained in. “It

was a phenomenon,” said Jim. “For a while we sold more foam,

fiberglass and resin than everything else combined.”

In 1977, Burt rolled out the Quickie, a single-seat design

he created in collaboration with Tom Jewett and Gene Sheehan.

VariEzes and Long-EZs gathered at Mojave for a celebration of
composite aircraft. It won the Outstanding New Design Award at Oshkosh ’78. Then

he began a center-line thrust twin, called the Defiant (Burt’s

personal airplane, not intended for a kit program), which was debuted at Oshkosh ’79 along with the Long EZ.

The VariEze had pretty much decimated the existence of 0-200 engines. Builders wanted to use the heavier

Lycoming engines and insisted on having a starter and full electrical system, which made the VariEze tail-heavy. In

1979 Burt developed a larger, Lycoming-powered EZ with some significant improvements in flying qualities. The

Long-EZ was introduced in 1980 and it became the

most popular and longest-range homebuilt in the

world. Its distance records still stand today. The rest,

as they say, is history and it’s been well documented.

After 1985, RAF developed two high performance

prototypes, the 5-place Catbird which won the CAFÉ

A grouping of Quickies
efficiency competition and the Boomerang Twin. Both were hangared after Burt lost his Airman’s Medical in

1998. Last year as Burt retired, two Scaled engineers restored the Catbird and the Boomerang and flew them to

AirVenture 2011. In total, RAF designed, built and flew 15 different aircraft.

Burt continued to attend the annual Oshkosh Convention. From 1976 to 1986 RAF rented a 10’ by

10’ booth during the Oshkosh Convention and during the week

he would make 20 percent of their annual sales. It wasn’t just

plans sales. There were T-shirts, patches and other memorabilia

that crossed the counter by the case. “It was tremendously

important to us.” His forums became one of the highlights of the

conventions, drawing the largest crowds for nearly two decades.

“To us, it was all about homebuilts.”

The Defiant leads the VariViggen and VariEze.
Not everything at RAF had turned to gold. Burt finally

started selling plans to the Defiant six years after he flew the

prototype and he only sold plans for a year with about a hundred sets going out the door. The Solitaire was

even less popular. The self-launching sailplane cost more to develop than the VariEze and Long-EZ combined,

but Burt only sold a few dozen

sets of plans. Over the years,

Burt sold kits for six models:

the VariViggen, VariViggen

SP, VariEze, Defiant, Long EZ

The VariEze (closest), Defiant and

and the Solitaire. The other 9
the VariViggen.
models that Burt developed

were done without an

audience…with no intention of developing plans or kits.

The Solotaire, a self-launching sailplane.
By 1996, Burt’s second company, Scaled Composites, was 14 years old

and was demanding so much of Burt’s time that he just didn’t have time for

homebuilders. He had sold his last set of plans to a homebuilder in 1985 but

continued to support his builders for over 20 years with newsletters, even

though there was no revenue to cover the costs of the newsletters. “I never
The Solotaire’s retractable engine.
charged for builder support, because I didn’t want people shunning it and
building bad airplanes as a result. Initially I did not realize what an enormous tail you create when you sell

plans.”

During the 1980s the flightlines at Oshkosh and Sun ‘n Fun were dominated by aircraft Burt had

designed. Thousands of VariEzes and Long-EZs were added to the FAA registry. They began showing up on

airports all over the world. They spawned a variety of copies and stimulated a variety of other homebuilt

and certificated designs that used composites: like the Glasair,

Lancair, Cozy, Pulsar, Glastar, Europa, Velocity, VK-30, SR-20/22,

Columbia, Boeing Dreamliner….

Looking back, Burt was asked to identify the three greatest

accomplishments in his illustrious career. He elected to include the

manufacturing methods developed for producing the VariEze and

Long-EZ. He views the Long-EZ as a refined model of the VariEze, a

natural part of the evolutionary process, a model B. There were a

Burt Rutan logging time on his lot of unique, innovative features on the two aircraft that have since
computer. Note the model just to
the right of the keyboard. been imitated. The robust structure, performance and appeal of the two

models, coupled with the fact that for a very low cost, people could buy

and build one of the airplanes, was, in Burt’s opinion one of the major achievements in his lifetime.

When asked what his favorite airplane was, he’d always say: “the next one.” That was what usually

held his attention and stimulated his passion. But after Spaceship One, he stopped saying “the next one.”

Spaceship One is his favorite

and ranks right up there

with the list of his three

greatest accomplishments.

“Most of the program was

Catbird & Boomerang Catbird & Boomerang
completely covert and

people were guessing what this White Knight was for. The idea that a private company could develop their

own space program without government funding was unheard of and un-thought of.”

The third part of the triangle “would be the fact that my tiny companies could attract contracts
from big aerospace firms and from the Government, gaining their confidence to do important research

work. When RAF had only four employees in the 1970s, it designed the skew-wing AD-1 research

aircraft for NASA. It is now on display at the Hiller

Museum in San Carlos. One of the Scaled Composites’

first contracts was with Beechcraft…to design the

Starship which they planned to use as the replacement

for their King Air line. That program started as a

preliminary design study at RAF. Scaled went on from

there with civilian, government and military, domestic

Spaceship One and the Rocket Scientist.
and foreign contracts for an unbelievable array of

manned and unmanned machines.

At its peak, RAF employed five people. Scaled composites

started with six employees and grew to about thirty-five when the

Starship made its first flight in 1983. After that it was common at

Scaled to see three or four designs being built in the shop while
Good Company: Paul Allen, Burt
Rutan and Sir Richard Branson two or three more were in flight testing, when employment was

well less than 100. When Scaled

undertook the Paul Allen manned space program in 2001, it was not

their largest effort, in spite of the fact that they employed less than

140. When Burt retired in March 2011, the company had nearly 400

people on the payroll and was developing SpaceShip Two, the world’s

largest manned commercial space system. Last December, Scaled The Beech Starship and friends.

revealed that it was developing Stratolaunch, the world’s largest

aircraft; a design stemming from Burt’s preliminary work that was started back in 1991.

Given the impact Burt Rutan had on the homebuilt movement, it seems inconceivable that we’ll

ever see that kind of innovation, popularity and commitment again. It seems strange not to be able to
ask the question anymore: “What will Burt turn up with next?”

Burt’s highly unusual design by anyone’s stan-

dard.... the Grizzley.

Burt and Tom Poberezny at Oshkosh

2005. Tom was quick to recognize and
admire the genius and success of Burt
Rutan.

RUTAN AIRCRAFT FACTORY: MANNED FIRST FLIGHTS

1 VariViggen Model #27 May 18, 1972 (marketed 1974)

2 VariEze POC Model #31 May 21, 1975

3 VariViggen SP Model #32SP July 1975 (marketed 1975)

4 VariEze Homebuilt Model #33 March 14, 1976 (marketed 1976)

5 Quickie Model #54 November 17, 1977 (Sold to QAC to market)

6 Defiant Model #40 June 30, 1978 (marketed 1984)

7 Long-EZ Model #61 June 13, 1979 (marketed 1980)

8 AD-1 Model #35 NASA December 1979

9 Amsoil biplane racer Model #68 Mortensen Aug 1981

10 Next Generation Trainer Model #73 Fairchild September 10, 1981

11 Grizzly STOL Model # 72 January 22, 1982

12 Solitaire Model #77 May 28, 1982 (marketed 1983)

 13 Voyager Model #76 June 22, 1984 (RTW on Dec 14th-23rd, 1986)

14 Catbird Model #81 January 14, 1988

15 Boomerang Model #202 June 19, 1996

Burt with models of some of his designs.

Long EZs and VariEzes on the ramp at Mojave.

The Boomerang

The Voyager at Oshkosh