Voyager, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, and the Nine Days a Flying Fuel Tank Circled the Whole World Without a Single Drop From Anybody

In December 1986, an experimental aircraft called Voyager became the first airplane to fly around the world nonstop and without refueling, carrying every ounce of fuel it needed off the ground at takeoff. Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, it circled the planet in 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds, covering more than 26,000 miles. The flight closed out a goal aviators had chased since the Wright brothers, and it was accomplished not by an air force or a corporation, but by a small team of volunteers in a hangar in Mojave, California.

What was Voyager and why was it built?

Voyager looked like a glider stretched past the point of reason. It had a wingspan of 111 feet - wider than a Boeing 727 - with twin booms and a tiny central cabin. Nearly every hollow space in the structure was a fuel tank.

The goal was the last unclaimed milestone of long-distance flight. Others had circled the globe before, but always with stops or aerial refueling. The U.S. Army did it in 1924 in the Douglas World Cruisers, taking months and swapping engines and pontoons along the way. Flying all the way around nonstop and unrefueled had never been done, and many engineers believed it was impossible.

The problem was a vicious circle of math. Flying that far demands enormous fuel, but fuel is heavy, and a heavy airplane needs a heavy structure to carry it, which demands still more fuel. For decades, the numbers simply would not close.

How did the Voyager project begin?

The breakthrough came from Burt Rutan, the composite-aircraft pioneer of Mojave, known for building airplanes that looked wrong and flew beautifully. As the story goes, in 1981 Burt, his brother Dick, and pilot Jeana Yeager were sitting in a restaurant when Burt sketched the concept on the back of a napkin.

The idea was an airplane built almost entirely of graphite composite - light as a whisper, strong as steel - essentially a flying fuel tank with just enough airplane wrapped around it to keep two people alive. It was constructed by hand by a crew of volunteers, funded by donations and stubbornness rather than any government or corporate budget.

Who were the pilots, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager?

Dick Rutan, Burt’s older brother, was a retired Air Force fighter pilot who flew 105 combat missions over Vietnam. He was a stick-and-rudder aviator to the core.

Jeana Yeager was a talented pilot and draftsman who held speed records of her own. Despite the name, she was no relation to Chuck Yeager. The two of them would fly the entire mission alone, together, for as long as it took.

How light was Voyager, and how much fuel did it carry?

Empty, Voyager weighed only about 2,000 pounds. For comparison, a Cessna 172 - a small four-seat trainer - weighs roughly 1,500 pounds empty. Voyager had the wingspan of an airliner but weighed barely more than the little Cessna, because it was made of paper-thin composite skins over honeycomb. You could push on a wing and watch it flex.

Loaded, it was a different machine entirely. Fully fueled, Voyager weighed nearly 9,000 pounds, and more than 7,000 pounds of that was gasoline. By weight, the airplane was more than three-quarters fuel. It carried 17 separate tanks, and moving that fuel from tank to tank to keep the aircraft balanced as it burned was nearly a full-time job.

The powerplant was a push-pull arrangement with two engines, front and rear. The front engine handled the heavy lifting of takeoff and climb, then was shut down and feathered once the airplane was light enough. The rear engine - a purpose-built liquid-cooled Continental - was designed to run continuously for the entire trip around the planet.

What happened during the takeoff from Edwards?

On the morning of December 14, 1986, Voyager lined up on the 14,000-foot runway at Edwards Air Force Base, one of the longest in America and the same lakebed that hosted the X-planes and the Space Shuttle. It needed every foot.

Weighed down with fuel, the enormous wings sagged until the tips drooped toward the concrete. As the airplane accelerated - painfully slowly, gaining speed a mile an hour at a time - the loaded winglets at the wingtips began scraping and grinding along the runway.

For more than two miles the airplane lumbered down the concrete with its tips flexing and skipping before it finally staggered into the air. The damaged winglets, worn through, then flapped and tore off entirely - both of them. Dick Rutan had to make a slow, careful turn and let the airflow shake the last ragged pieces loose. The airplane was partly broken before it even cleared the airport fence.

What was it like to live inside Voyager for nine days?

The cabin was about the size of a phone booth laid on its side - roughly 7.5 feet long and 2 feet wide. One pilot flew from a small side-stick while the other tried to rest in a space too cramped to stretch out in.

There was no bed, no galley, no shower, and no relief from the noise. The rear engine droned directly behind the pilots’ heads, buzzing through the composite hour after hour. The cabin was cold, and it flexed and boomed in turbulence. Two people lived in it for nine straight days.

How did the crew navigate the weather?

Voyager could not survive a storm. Built featherlight and fragile, it could be torn apart by the kind of thunderstorm that would merely rattle an airliner. So the crew flew around weather, never through it.

To do that, they had a team on the ground. From a trailer back in Mojave, Burt Rutan and a group of meteorologists watched the entire planet and fed Dick and Jeana headings to thread them between storms like a needle through cloth.

The most dramatic example was Typhoon Marge, sitting directly in their path over the western Pacific. Unable to outrun it or climb over it, the ground team guided them along its outer edge - close enough that the storm’s own circulating winds gave them a push. They rode the outer bands of a typhoon like a surfer catching a wave, letting the very thing that could kill them help carry them along.

What went wrong near the end of the flight?

The days blurred together across Africa and the Atlantic, with the crew tiptoeing around restricted airspace and countries that denied overflight permission. Dick Rutan later said fatigue was the enemy no one could fully prepare for. At one point over the dark Atlantic, the airplane pitched into an unusual attitude and nearly went inverted, and he had to wrestle it back by hand.

The worst came when they were almost home. Coming up the coast of Baja California, with Edwards only a few hours away, the rear engine quit - the fuel wasn’t feeding properly. The huge fragile glider began sinking toward the Pacific in the dark, and the front engine had been shut down and feathered days earlier, sitting stone cold at altitude for the better part of a week.

Working the problem as the water rose, the crew coaxed the frozen front engine to cough, catch, and roar back to life. They got both engines running, sorted out the fuel, climbed back up, and pressed on for home.

How did the flight end?

On December 23, 1986, Voyager returned over Edwards Air Force Base, where a crowd of thousands waited in the desert cold. Streaked, weathered, and missing both winglets, the airplane settled back onto the same lakebed it had left from.

The final numbers: 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds aloft, and more than 26,000 miles flown around the Earth. When the tanks were measured, only a few gallons of fuel remained. After circling the entire planet, they had cut it that close.

Dick and Jeana had been folded into that tiny cabin so long they could barely stand when they climbed out. But they had accomplished the flight the smart money said was impossible - the last great milestone of atmospheric flight, achieved by a homebuilt airplane from a dusty hangar.

Where is Voyager now?

Voyager hangs today in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., in the main hall alongside the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Flyer - fitting company for an aircraft that closed the book on nonstop, unrefueled global flight.

Key Takeaways

Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world nonstop and unrefueled, completing the trip in December 1986.
Pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew 26,000+ miles in 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds, landing with only a few gallons of fuel remaining.
The composite aircraft weighed about 2,000 pounds empty but carried over 7,000 pounds of gasoline across 17 tanks - more than three-quarters of its loaded weight was fuel.
The mission included a runway-scraping takeoff that tore off both winglets, a ride along the edge of Typhoon Marge, and a near-ditching when the rear engine quit near Baja California.
Voyager was built by a team of volunteers on donations, and now hangs in the National Air and Space Museum beside the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Flyer.