Flight of Fancy

By Richard Stengel

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, no 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 the 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's 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 to 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 as 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."

With reporting by Scott Brown/Mojave