Voyager and Battered Crew Head for Home

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, tired and bruised from nine days in their tiny cockpit, were expected to land the Voyager at Edwards Air Force Base shortly after sunrise today, ending a 26,000-mile odyssey that already has carried them into the aviation hall of fame.

“They feel like a horse on the way home,” Voyager spokesman Lee Herron said.

The plane’s projected route for the final hours was being kept secret to discourage curiosity-seekers in private planes from getting too close to the Voyager, Herron said. “Please remember it is a life-and-death situation all the time,” he said. “Do not try to talk with them on the radio or fly by.”

Due This Morning

The experimental aircraft was due over Edwards early this morning after flying around the world without stopping and without refueling--the first time anyone has ever done that--and more than doubling the previous such distance record, set in 1962.

Burt Rutan, the pilot’s brother and the Voyager’s designer, said he was concerned about the final moments of the flight because the spindly aircraft is “extremely demanding to land” even in the best of circumstances.

“For someone who has been thrown around in this box for nine days, it (the landing) is a tough thing,” Rutan said. “It’s an unknown.”

The Voyager on Monday evening was bucking slight head winds as it cruised up the west coast of Mexico.

Repeated scares over whether the plane would have enough fuel to complete the flight evaporated Monday when Burt Rutan announced that the plane would land with enough fuel left over to fly on to New York City and 1,000 miles beyond.

That would be enough fuel, he noted, to fly the Voyager on to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, which has expressed interest in displaying the plane.

‘Jeana Has Some Injuries’

Rutan said both pilots were in good spirits, but that “Jeana has some injuries from being thrown around in the cockpit.” He said he did not know the extent of the injuries.

Dick Rutan stayed in the pilot’s seat for about 85% of the time during the often stormy flight, according to his brother. It is easier for the person strapped into that seat to protect himself from the severe turbulence that knocked the small plane around like a hummingbird in a thunderstorm.

Yeager spent most of the flight lying on the hard bunk and it was not possible for her to have remained strapped in for long periods because she had to move around and help monitor flight instruments, Burt Rutan said.

As a result, Yeager was bounced off the ceiling and the walls of the cabin as Voyager plowed through storms so fierce that the plane was tossed on its side repeatedly.

Physical, Emotional Ordeal

The arduous journey proved to be something of a physical and emotional ordeal for the crew as well as the dozens of workers at Voyager headquarters here who made the adventure possible.

“We have seen every emotion,” Burt Rutan said Monday.

He said fatigue drove Rutan and Yeager “almost to the point of incapacitation,” when even reading a gauge aboard the aircraft proved a challenge. He also said the two were driven to tears of frustration because exhaustion had made the simplest chores nearly impossible to complete.

But there also were tears of joy during the lonely flight.

In a radio interview with Reuters news service, Rutan said his most emotional experience came after the Voyager had crossed the coast of west Africa and headed out over the Atlantic after a turbulent flight across much of that continent.

‘Very High Experience’

“After that day and night experience, which was very tiring, trying and challenging, to finally look out at night and know that the coastline is sitting behind you and that you actually made it was a very high experience and it was very, very emotional,” he said.

“I was so happy that it happened, that I cried, I really did,” the former Air Force fighter pilot said.

Rutan said he and Yeager during rough moments found solace in anticipating the completion of the flight, but added: “It seems like every time we thought about that or talked about that during the flight or allowed our minds to dwell on that pleasant experience, we were brought very hard back to reality by a thunderstorm or some other problem that let us know that you’re a long way from completing this thing.”

‘I’m in Awe’

Rutan added that he had underestimated weather as a factor in the flight. “I’m really in awe of Mother Nature,” he said.

In the Sunday night interview with Reuters, Rutan sounded tired but lucid. “Let’s not do our chickens before they’re hatched,” he said. “That’s the case right now. We’re in the last inning, this is the last lap of the race and we’ve double-checked everything. I just don’t want to screw up.

“The airplane endured a lot more than I thought it ever would. It endured some stresses on it that I never thought even in my wildest imagination that it was capable of,” Rutan said.

“I have a deep, healthy respect for this machine now and I feel very close to it right now. It’s a good machine and it’s carried us around the world and it’s just got to carry us a little bit further.”

At Mojave Airport on Monday, his brother was asked what the flight had proved. An accomplished aircraft designer, Burt Rutan replied: “It demonstrated we could build an airplane lighter than the skeptics thought we could build” that would be capable of flying all the way around the world.

New Generation of Aircraft

That, in turn, will lead to a new generation of long-distance aircraft built from lightweight composite materials like the Voyager, he said.

One of the first things the designer planned to do after the plane lands was to measure the depth of insects collected on the front edge of the wings during the flight, which began at 8 a.m. on Dec. 14. Rutan said the number of insects that hit the wings, instead of being swept over or under them in a proper aerodynamic flow, should give him a better idea of just how good is the Voyager’s design.

Among the first people expected to inspect the plane is an official from the Federation Aeronautique International of Paris, the agency that must officially certify the flight in order for the Voyager to claim the record.

One of the things that that official will check is a landing gear device that “counts how many times it has gone up and down,” according to Herron.

“We hope it’s only once,” he quipped.