In 1973, Burt Rutan decided to quit his job as Director of Development for Bede Aircraft Corporation to begin his own venture in the homebuilt aircraft industry. He’d just sold a few plan sets for his VariViggen airplane ($28 each) to some craftsmen at the EAA Convention in Oshkosh, WI. So, armed with a $15K loan from his father, he moved his family of 4 from Newton, KS to the remote desert airport town of Mojave, CA to set up Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF).
Burt was all of 29 & full of courage, with a grand vision to impact the world of aviation. But at that time, no one imagined the expansive legacy he would bestow - setting world records, helping launch the private space industry, & inspiring generations of engineers to come.
BRAB (Burt Rutan AutoBio) will be so full of content (including many charts, photos & videos) that it can’t be contained in a printed book (see Table of Contents). This web-based app will deliver all of Burt’s autobiography content to your computer or mobile device.
BRAB is a work-in-progress started in 2020. The Section Summaries & some Chapters are here now in draft form. This web-based app also has several incomplete features. Updates & new Chapters will be added as they’re completed over the next few years. So, please check back here regularly.
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They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So thousands of photos should be worth millions of words? As new Chapters are forthcoming, please enjoy browsing through our huge, carefully curated collection of photos organized by BRAB Chapter. The context may not be obvious now, but - these Galleries should whet your appetite for the Chapters to come...
It’s strongly suggested you start your BRAB Adventure by first reading Chapter 17, then the Table of Contents, then Chapter 82 & then the 10 Section Summaries below.
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Legacy Prologue text here.
Burt Rutan was born on June 17, 1943, during World War II. Coincidentally, this was also the day the Lockheed Skunk Works was founded, as well as the day the first drawings of the Howard Hughes HK-1 Spruce Goose were created.
As he grew up, most of Burt’s school friends pursued opportunities to excel in school sports. But the Seventh Day Adventist Church, of which his family were members, forbade activities on Saturdays, on the basis that the Sabbath was a day of rest. While this religious restriction was constraining, it also created the opportunity for his father, brother, sister & young Burt himself, to take up aviation - an interest that had no prior history in the Rutan family tree.
As a young teen growing up in the 1950’s, it was model airplanes - not sports, motorcycles, cars or rock n’ roll - that sparked his interest, fulfilled his curiosity & challenged his creative mind. He, along with his dentist father Pop & both his siblings ultimately charted their own career paths in aviation.
His acceptance into the “Learn by doing” California Polytechnic College in 1961 provided Burt with the skills, that would not only affirm his choice of career, but also prepare him for those “next steps” after college. Twenty six years later he was awarded Cal Poly’s first Honorary Doctorate Degree as he delivered its 1987 commencement address.
In his Senior year at Cal Poly, Burt won the AIAA National Student Design award, & in accepting it, was thrilled to meet the Apollo moon program architect - Werner von Braun. This encounter with his hero would prove to be one of the most inspiring moments of his life.
The stories in this Section introduce the foundational cornerstones upon which Burt’s entire career & adventurous life were built. Skip this Section if you wish, but if you do, you will not have the answer to the question of why the entire Rutan Family became an Aviation Family in the 1950s.
Burt graduated from college during the middle of the Apollo Moon Program. As a result, there was no shortage of jobs available for new engineering graduates. It might come as a surprise to note, that of the offers available to him, he selected the one with the lowest salary.
Right out of college, Burt began his career as a Civilian Flight Test Engineer for the United States Air Force. Since flight testing was critical to his future success as an airplane developer, it was the most important decision he ever made.
Burt started this job as an inexperienced 21-year old & ended it with the courage & the credentials he would need to make history with all-new research aircraft. After 7 years of fast-paced, hard-work, he made a dramatic change - from a Government job fighting for a Vietnam victory, to designing light aircraft with a new family.
In this Section Burt reveals the single obsession that ultimately directed his entire career path.
What began in college as a curiosity about a potentially fatal airplane design flaw, was fueled to a personal passion while working as a Civilian Flight Test Engineer for the United States Air Force. It was there that Burt experienced firsthand, the terror of being caught in the deadly stall/spin. It was also there, that attending the funerals of fellow test pilots was an all-too-common part of the workweek.
At just 22 years old, Burt was newly-graduated with a wife, two babies & the beginnings of a homebuilt airplane in the garage. He was testing fighter jets by day, & spending all other waking moments exploring design configurations on his quest to find the fix that had eluded aviators since the Wright Brothers.
What resulted was the incredibly nimble VariViggen, which sported the configuration needed to allow the canard to stall while the wing is not stalled during aggressive maneuvering. This feature solved the stall/spin safety issue.
Little did Burt know that his garage hobby creation & his Air Force spin testing, would lead him to launch two startup businesses, which not only boasted unprecedented safety records, but would eventually influence the entire world of aviation. These humble beginnings would also lead to 2 historic milestones.
The stories in these Chapters surround that first startup - Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF) in which a tiny team of people produced & flight tested 18 completely new manned aircraft designs in only 11 years (Boomerang was flown in 1996). RAF also produced a research prototype airplane for NASA, a special Wing Ship for the Navy & a proof-of-concept prototype military trainer for an Aerospace Prime corporation.
As the success of Burt’s first company - Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF) - escalated, Burt began to recognize a potentially huge market for prototype development & flight testing for customers other than homebuilders. To tap into that field, however, would require a significantly larger staff & facility. SCALED Composites was founded & incorporated in 1982 to pursue that goal.
SCALED was a tiny startup company, yet it attracted the most sophisticated aerospace customers. It quickly became the world’s most productive research aircraft company, bringing into fruition the “first flight” of an astounding 31 manned research aircraft & 17 unmanned projects in just 29 years. Like RAF, SCALED also achieved its own historic milestone with the first non-government manned space program.
All this was accomplished with small teams of eclectic, extraordinary characters who thrived under Burt’s leadership philosophy of “have fun!” Together they produced results in the Mojave Desert that no competitor was able to emulate. SCALED had just 26 employees when the Starship prototype flew in 1983 & 127 employees when SpaceShipOne flew out of the atmosphere in 2004.
In this Section you can read many behind-the-scenes stories about a huge variety of projects, many that have not previously been disclosed.
In Section 5 Burt goes into a teaching mode - to reveal the methods he discovered & then used in his two entrepreneur businesses. He didn’t set out to be a unique manager or to study management theories & methods. His education focused on Engineering, not Management. He motivated people around him to copy his own ethics & efficiency in getting the tasks done quickly, with quality & with the assurance to avoid financial failure.
He had the title of Manager during his Air Force years (1965 to 1972). However, in Kansas at Bede he realized there’s a very big difference between a Government Manager who operates within detailed specific rules & one in a commercial business who is responsible to hire & fire the employees & responsible for generating the rules himself.
The methods Burt used resulted in consistent profitability in spite of the fact that many contracts were structured as fixed price.
The Chapters in this Section reveal not only his lessons learned about managing creative people, but also his unique solutions to achieve world-class efficiency while meeting demanding schedules.
Chapters 55, 57 & 58 can be considered Case-Studies for teaching how to get the most from a staff that’s continuously challenged to solve problems by inventing new solutions. There’s lots here that should be helpful for those starting their first business, as well as for the experienced managers who may have been doing it wrong.
Play pool with Paul Newman.
Chat or eat with 3 US Presidents & 5 State Governors.
Bring food to eat with Harrison Ford in his home, when he was confined to a wheelchair.
Cruise Southeast Asia, Japan & China with a Microsoft co-founder & an Apple co-founder.
Dine with three CIA Directors.
Meet Werner von Braun, the tech leader of the Apollo moon program.
Enjoy a home barbecue cooked by a von Braun rocket scientist.
Have lunch (without wine) with Ernest & Julio Gallo on a nuclear Aircraft Carrier.
Have lunch with the discoverers of the element Plutonium & the planet Pluto.
Play golf with 13 PGA professional golfers, including Arnold Palmer & an Olympic Gold Medalist.
Open a new Disneyland ride with George Lucas.
Dine with Jimmy Doolittle & James Stewart.
Be visited unannounced & grilled by General Curtis LeMay.
Meet Jack Northrop, Kelly Johnson & the key execs of Beechcraft, Cessna, TaylorCraft, Google & Learjet.
Be confined alone with Elon Musk for 5 hours in a tiny room, twice.
And meet Charles Lindbergh, long after he became a recluse?
For the first time, Burt shares the details of his interfaces with these & another 70 interesting people in the 4 Chapters of Section 6.
The stories in this Section share some of Burt’s most significant adventures in his personal life. What you will see here are the kind of things that garnered his attention when he wasn’t developing & testing aircraft & spaceships.
Burt’s single-minded drive to design, build & fly prototype aircraft extolled a cost on his health, & in particular, his heart (Chapter 67). After decades, events made him review & change his lifestyle. This would settle his home life, reunite him with family, bring him closer to his children, & expand his interest in the world around him.
It may seem to some that he spent every waking & many sleeping moments immersed in aviation. But Burt had a wide range of other interests - with some game-changers that played a big role in his life. One of those, a relationship with the game of golf, started in his teens & later included playing with 16 different PGA Tour Professionals.
Burt developed an interest in the manufacturing methods of ancient stone monuments & the possibility of pre-history, high-technology civilizations. He studied the Younger Dryas Impact on Earth & several other fascinating theories in pursuit of knowledge & understanding.
The ultimate item in any test pilot’s résumé is when he is trusted/honored to pilot the first flight of a new type of airplane. Burt’s first flights were mainly his own homebuilts. He was the first-flight-pilot on 7 of them (Chapter 72). He was licensed to fly single engine land planes, multi engine land planes, single engine seaplanes & helicopters. He also had an instrument flight rating.
Burt’s attempt to retire was successful - but only for a few months. His decision to retire early, & the subsequent move to a location more favorable to his heart health challenges, turned out to be a more unorthodox transition than expected.
Burt anticipated leaving the high stress & demanding schedule of aerospace work behind, in exchange for a leisurely lifestyle & improving his golf skills (chapter 70). This tradeoff had become especially enticing during his last several months of working 70-plus hours per week, getting the BiPod flight-worthy (chapter 53) before his exit from Mojave.
Little did Burt realize what new projects awaited him after his official retirement in 2010 - including his work for Paul Allen, serving on the Board of Directors for Stratolaunch - the world’s largest aircraft, & the agonizing challenges of a failed research airplane.
In 2014, Burt slowed down just enough to embark on comprehensive tours of the many aerospace museums he had never before visited. The stories from these rewarding trips are included in this Section, & the experiences made Burt wish he had made time to explore these treasures decades earlier.
Ever the creative engineer, pushing against the boundaries of design, Burt continues to innovate & cultivate new aircraft ideas to this day. Retirement? Yeah - he’s workin’ on it!
Starting in 2020, Burt’s family also relocated to North Idaho. Sister Nell & granddaughter Lindy’s family remained in California. Grandson Eli’s family moved to Texas. The rest & more (14 total in 6 households) are now all within 30 minutes of each other.
Section 8 includes many stories of Burt’s life after his escape from the Mojave Desert. It includes his family, his assessment of his accomplishments, details of his attempt to retire & his 49th manned aircraft.
Don’t forget to check back with this Section in the months & years to come. You never know which of Burt’s retirement hobbies will become the next big aeronautics breakthrough!
This Section is an introduction to answer the question “Who is Burt Rutan?” It includes some details about a great number of aircraft & spacecraft designs. All 49 manned research aircraft in which Burt was involved are shown (all developed in only 43 years). For the first time anywhere, hundreds of preliminary designs that were never built are revealed. In addition, Burt’s major recognitions & notable press coverage items are listed.
What’s striking is how so many projects were completed so quickly by such a tiny staff. When a writer asked how this was possible, Burt replied “There’s absolutely nothing else to do in Mojave.”
This section has details about Burt’s family tree, his romantic relationships, family stories & Pop Rutan’s memoirs.
Burt’s son & daughter-in-law, Jeff & Angel Rutan, created a large quilt representing significant aircraft in Burt & his wife’s lives. This quilt, gifted to Burt & Tonya in 2020, was dubbed “The BRAB Quilt.”
The representation of that quilt below serves as a menu. Soon it will access a photo gallery for each of the 49 manned aircraft developed & flown by Burt and/or under his leadership at SCALED. Other aircraft in which Burt was involved will also eventually have their own galleries.
Tap any of the 63 individual aircraft photos below for a larger version of the photo with a caption. Future releases will add a gallery of photos for each aircraft.