Begin Your BRAB Adventure

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.

After a historic 46 years of Aerospace Development in the California High Desert, Burt retired to North Idaho in 2011. His activity after that has been to develop his 49th Manned Research Aircraft, to continue designing future airplanes & to work on an unusual autobiography - a free downloadable website - rather than a printed paper book.

Anyone can already read about Burt in Thousands of Websites, but much of this information is not accurate. It’s incomplete & poorly organized. So, Burt took on the BRAB (Burt Rutan AutoBio) project.

Burt is working on this autobiography, featuring hundreds of fun-to-read stories of his life, thousands of photos & hundreds of videos - all free to download. This has been Burt’s #1 major project since 2017. BRAB will become a huge online adventure - unlike the usual autobiography book.

To get started, it’s best to look at the Table of Contents (TOC). It consists of 90 Chapters, arranged in 10 Sections. From there, you can go directly to all of the Section Summaries & any of the Currently Published Chapters. Only about 10% of the Chapters have been published, but many more will be added in the coming months.

Now, select the Legacy Prologue - Timeline, where you can see over 200 Events, including: all of his 49 Manned Research Aircraft (Chapter 82); his main Awards/Education/Patents (Chapter 85) & much more.

Next, to focus on the content, Tap Here to look at Summaries of all 10 Sections.

Then select Chapter Photo Galleries that allow you to view nearly 5,000 photos!

When you select Links you will see over 100 items: PDF Documents, Videos, Websites & Web Articles/Products/Searches.
For Burt’s personal favorites, check out:
2015 Wright Memorial Trophy Dinner,
Homebuilt Starship Preliminary Design,
Famous People Burt Met,
Top Pencil,
It’s Mainly Just for Fun,
Burt Rutan an EAA Perspective,
The Wit & Wisdom of Burt Rutan &
The ‘Black Sky’ SpaceShipOne Movies.

Readers of BRAB are encouraged to contribute. Tap Feedback (or in the top right Menu). Then send us any of your comments, corrections, suggestions, things to add/delete & your assessments (good or bad). We will do our best to include your inputs as we continually work to improve BRAB.

Tap a Section below to begin exploring BRAB content.
Tap the Menu (top right on all BRAB pages) for more options.

Introduction & Section Summaries

Introduction •
Forward, Acknowledgements & Legacy Prologue

Currently Published Chapters

Legacy Prologue - Timeline

Thousands of BRAB Photos!

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...

Chapter Photo Galleries
(4,879 total photos)

But Wait...

There’s much more to explore (with most recently added items & updates at top) on our Links Page! (bottom right in the Menu - found at top right on all BRAB pages)

Search Web for More
Updated: Dec 13, 2024 • v5b
Introduction
• Forward
• Acknowledgements
• Legacy Prologue - Timeline
Additional Info
Scroll to Legacy Prologue
Updated: Mar 29, 2024
Forward, Acknowledgements & Legacy Prologue

Forward • BRAB is Not a Normal Paper Book

Forward text here.

Acknowledgements • Reviewers, Family & Friends Who Helped

Acknowledgements text here.

Prologue • Legacy Discussions & Photos

Legacy Prologue text here.


“… And that was the moment I decided ‘for absolute certain’ I wanted to be an aircraft designer.”
–Burt Rutan, at the B-36 formation flyover viewing in Chapter 3

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.

Section 1 Chapters

“What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top US Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees & monkeys.”
–Douglas Brinkley

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.

Section 2 Chapters

“The homebuilts did it first, & then the factories copied them.”
–Peter Garrison

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.

Section 3 Chapters

“Other companies did two or three of these things (design, build, instrument, flight test & report), but SCALED didn’t have a competitor who did them all.”
–Burt Rutan

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.

Section 4 Chapters

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work & give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast & endless sea.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets & mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, & wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, & we need them all.”
–Sir Arthur C. Clarke
"Whenever there's a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back & find a time period when the consensus was 'Well, that's nonsense!' So what that means is that a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense."
–Burt Rutan

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.

Section 5 Chapters

“Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.”
–Wernher von Braun
“…reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.”
–Kelly Johnson - Skunk Works Rule 14

How does an Airplane Designer working in the Mojave Desert, get the opportunity to:

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.

Section 6 Chapters

“While playing a 4-hour round of golf with a stranger, you learn more about his character than if you work with him for a year - his honesty, patience, temper, friendliness & belief in a God.”
–Burt Rutan
“The purpose of man's existence on Earth is to fly. Time not spent flying or preparing to fly is wasted.”
–Les Berven

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.

Section 7 Chapters

“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”
–Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, & others do just the same with their time.”
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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!

Section 8 Chapters

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
–Abraham Lincoln

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.”

Section 9 Chapters

“In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together & the music that brings harmony.“
–Friedrich Nietzsche

This section has details about Burt’s family tree, his romantic relationships, family stories & Pop Rutan’s memoirs.

Section 10 Chapters

BRAB Quilt Aircraft Gallery

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.

The actual BRAB Quilt - 4.5 feet wide by 6 feet tall.
The actual BRAB Quilt - 4.5 feet wide by 6 feet tall.
Updated: Dec 13, 2024
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