The Rutan Voyager, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, and the Nine Days Without Landing That Closed the Book on Aviation's Last Great First

On December 23, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager touched down at Edwards Air Force Base after flying 24,987 miles around the entire planet on a single load of fuel - a feat that had never been accomplished in 83 years of powered flight. They had been airborne for nine days, three minutes, and forty-four seconds. When the wheels touched the lakebed, 106 pounds of fuel remained out of the roughly 7,000 pounds they had departed with.

This was aviation’s last great first.

What Was the Last Remaining Aviation First?

By 1986, the major milestones of aviation seemed fully conquered. Charles Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic nonstop in 1927. A pilot had circumnavigated the globe solo in 1933. Humans had walked on the moon. Supersonic jetliners were carrying paying passengers across the Atlantic before breakfast.

One item remained unchecked after eight decades of powered flight: flying around the entire Earth nonstop, with no fuel added anywhere along the way. Not once, in all that time, had it been done.

Burt Rutan decided to close that final chapter.

Who Designed the Voyager - and Why Did It Look That Way?

Burt Rutan is among the most original minds American aviation has produced. His homebuilt designs - the VariEze and the Long-EZ - appeared at Oshkosh in the late 1970s and forced every other aircraft designer to reconsider their assumptions. He would later design SpaceShipOne, the private spacecraft that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004.

In the early 1980s, however, he was solving a specific problem: how do you push an airplane roughly 25,000 miles on one fuel load?

The math is brutal. The fuel required for the journey is so heavy it makes the airplane nearly unflyable at departure. Every pound burned changes the handling. Burt’s solution was a configuration unlike anything flying at the time: a slender central fuselage barely wide enough for two people lying end to end, a canard foreplane up front, twin booms extending aft to twin tail sections, and a wingspan of 111 feet - larger than a Douglas DC-3.

The wings were not just structural. They were tanks. Seventeen separate fuel tanks were built into the airframe, holding every drop of fuel that would have to last the journey.

How Heavy Was Voyager at Takeoff?

The weight distribution at departure was extraordinary. The empty airframe, built from carbon fiber and fiberglass honeycomb composite panels, weighed barely 1,000 pounds. Fully fueled, Voyager weighed just under 9,700 pounds total - with approximately 7,000 pounds of that being fuel.

Fuel represented roughly 72 percent of Voyager’s total takeoff weight.

Power came from two Continental engines. The larger rear Teledyne Continental O-240 handled the long cruise segments at approximately 10,000 feet. The smaller front engine assisted during takeoff and demanding conditions, then was shut down to conserve fuel during cruise. Running both engines simultaneously consumed too much to make the numbers work. For most of the flight, only one engine was turning.

Who Were Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager?

Dick Rutan was not simply the famous designer’s brother. He was a combat-decorated fighter pilot who flew 325 missions in Vietnam in the F-100 Super Sabre. He understood fuel and range the way you understand things when the nearest friendly airfield is hundreds of miles away and the gauges don’t lie. After Vietnam, he became a test pilot and a core member of Burt’s team at the Rutan Aircraft Factory in Mojave.

Jeana Yeager had no relation to Chuck Yeager - a fact she spent most of the 1980s clarifying for journalists who assumed otherwise. She was an accomplished pilot and businesswoman who had been part of record-setting flights before the Voyager project. She brought precision and an ability to perform under conditions that would have broken most people.

What Was It Like to Fly in Voyager for Nine Days?

The livable space inside Voyager measured approximately seven and a half feet long, two feet wide, and just over two feet high. There was one seat for the pilot on duty. The other crew member lay on a thin pad in the space aft of the seat, trying to rest while the engines ran without stopping and the airframe vibrated continuously. Sitting, lying, and crouching were the only options. Standing was not possible.

That was their world for nine days.

How Did the Takeoff Go?

Voyager departed from Edwards Air Force Base on December 14, 1986 - the same California desert where the sound barrier had been broken in 1947, where rocket-powered research aircraft had pushed the edges of the possible for three decades, where space shuttles would later land.

The takeoff required 17,000 feet of runway. Even then, the wingtips dragged under the fuel weight, and the outboard winglet structures sheared away during the roll. Voyager finally lifted at approximately 65 knots. Dick immediately circled the field so the ground crew could assess the wing damage from below.

The call came back: keep going.

Voyager turned west.

What Went Wrong Over Africa and the Pacific?

The mission plan routed Voyager westward along a roughly equatorial path, following the trade winds: west across the Pacific, across southern Asia, over the Indian Ocean, across Africa, over the Atlantic, and back to California from the east.

Africa brought the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone - a band of convective weather where trade winds from both hemispheres collide, driving moisture and energy into cumulonimbus cells building to 50,000 and 60,000 feet. There is no climbing over it in a piston aircraft. You thread through it.

The autopilot had developed problems early in the flight and could not be trusted in demanding conditions. Dick hand-flew the fragile composite airframe through convective activity that a turbine transport would have diverted around, while Jeana managed the fuel system - monitoring burn rates, balancing tanks, and calculating remaining fuel against the planned consumption curve. Drawing from the wrong tank at the wrong moment would shift the center of gravity and make the already-demanding handling worse.

Weather detours and headwinds that had not been forecast added up against the fuel budget. By the time they cleared Africa, Jeana’s calculations showed they were burning slightly more fuel per hour than planned. The ground team at Mojave was running the same numbers. The margin was shrinking.

Days six and seven, over the Pacific, the crew was sleeping in two- or three-hour stretches at best. The engine noise was constant and unvarying. Jeana developed bruising from the hard composite surfaces. Dick was running on the kind of discipline built over 325 combat missions and a career of demanding flight. More weather near the Philippine Islands forced additional detours and further unplanned fuel burn.

How Much Fuel Was Left When They Landed?

By the time Voyager crossed Central America inbound to California, the fuel math had become critical.

106 pounds of fuel remained.

Out of the roughly 7,000 pounds they had departed with, they had burned 98.5 percent of the fuel on board. The engines were running on what amounts to a rounding error.

Dick declared a fuel emergency on approach to Edwards. He flew a straight-in final - no extra circling, no extra miles. Voyager touched down on December 23, 1986, completing a flight of nine days, three minutes, and forty-four seconds covering 24,987 miles.

Why the Voyager Flight Belongs at the Top of Aviation History

Dick climbed out and later described being nearly unable to walk - nine days of confinement had tightened every muscle in his legs and back. Jeana had bruised ribs from the vibration. Both wept on the lakebed.

Aviation historians place the Voyager flight alongside the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, Lindbergh over the Atlantic, and the first supersonic flight. Each of those moments closed a chapter on what had been considered impossible. The Voyager flight may be the final entry on that list - the last major aviation first requiring a human crew in a conventional aircraft to accomplish something no human crew had ever done.

What makes it particularly significant is how it came together. No government program. No defense contract. Dick Rutan described it as proof of what free people, working together and believing in something, could accomplish - pilots, engineers, and volunteers who built the airplane at Mojave with their own hands, on donated parts and donated time, and flew it themselves.

The Voyager aircraft hangs today in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, near the main entrance, in the company of the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Flyer. Standing next to it, the cockpit space is almost incomprehensible. It is smaller than you expect. Look at that tiny tube and consider nine days over open ocean, through African storms, over the Pacific at night - and the kind of people who climb into something like that and fly away.

Key Takeaways

• Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled circumnavigation of Earth on December 23, 1986, departing and landing at Edwards Air Force Base after nine days, three minutes, and forty-four seconds aloft over 24,987 miles.
• Fuel was approximately 72 percent of Voyager’s takeoff weight - roughly 7,000 pounds in an aircraft that weighed just under 9,700 pounds fully loaded; the empty composite airframe weighed barely 1,000 pounds.
• Burt Rutan designed the aircraft with a 111-foot wingspan, 17 fuel tanks built into the structure, and a cockpit space roughly 7.5 feet long, 2 feet wide, and just over 2 feet high.
• They landed with only 106 pounds of fuel remaining - 98.5 percent consumed - after Dick declared a fuel emergency and flew a straight-in final approach with no room for extra miles.
• The flight is widely regarded as aviation’s last great first: the final milestone achievable by a human crew in a conventional aircraft that had never previously been accomplished.