THE RETURN OF THE VOYAGER : Reporter’s Notebook : Beneath the Optimism Were Some Real Fears

Beneath the optimism shown by the Voyager team during the plane’s harrowing nine-day trip, there were deep fears that the mission could end in disaster.

Even as the plane was circling the globe, several Voyager officials expressed concern that severe storms could damage the plane so much that it might crash, or that a leak could drain fuel from one area so quickly that the pilots would not be able to control the plane, or that one of the two engines would fail before enough fuel had been used to allow just one engine to keep Voyager aloft.

And shortly after the plane landed, Burt Rutan, the pilot’s brother who first sketched out Voyager’s unique design on a restaurant napkin, was overheard telling another member of the Voyager team: “I couldn’t believe they had made it after all the problems they had.”

Burt Rutan was aboard one of the chase planes that flew over the Pacific Ocean early Tuesday morning to escort the Voyager back to Edwards Air Force Base. When he spotted the Voyager, he said, “I cried.”

Many Voyager officials had expected to make several successful attempts at the global flight before finally succeeding.

Even as the plane was in the air, Dick Rutan’s father, George, had said he was convinced his son would keep trying until he succeeded.

True to the description that the Voyager project has been a mom-and-pop operation, both pilots’ parents were on hand at the Mojave Airport command post during the entire flight, standing around the hangar until late in the evening, watching the weather forecasts, joking with staffers and volunteers, and answering endless questions from a press corps that grew to the size of an army.

And although Dick Rutan nearly always got top billing, his own mother bristled whenever she felt that Jeana Yeager was being sold short.

Don’t pay too much attention to “Dick’s velvet arm,” she chastised reporters one afternoon. Yeager deserved a lot of credit too, she insisted.

The Voyager’s epic flight around the world left some officials in the Far East shaking their heads over their brief encounter with the little plane.

On Day 3, a chase plane on the Malay Peninsula had been waiting to rendezvous with the Voyager for a close-up inspection of the plane.

But as Voyager approached, officials at the remote airstrip grew more and more confused, and even became a little suspicious, according to Lee Herron, a Voyager official.

“They could not comprehend the fact that it would not stop for fuel,” he said. Everyone else had to stop before heading out over the Indian Ocean, so why wouldn’t this thing called Voyager?

By the time the local officials finally gave the chase plane the green light, the Voyager was long gone.

About midway through the flight, Dr. George Jutila, Voyager’s flight surgeon, expressed concern that Rutan and Yeager might suffer a 30% hearing loss as a result of constant engine noise in the cabin. Jutila examined the two shortly after the flight, but the results were not immediately known.

Yeager’s father, Lee, confirmed, however, that she does have “a little trouble with her hearing.” But he said Jutila does not believe it will be a permanent loss. The reason, Lee Yeager said, is that the impairment appears to be the same type that his daughter had experienced on one of the many Voyager test flights, and that turned out to be temporary.

Rutan and Yeager were only a third of the way through their journey when the most famous test pilot of all rained on their parade.

Retired Air Force Gen. Chuck Yeager, who is not related to Jeana Yeager, flew from Edwards Air Force Base to Kitty Hawk, N.C., last Wednesday to commemorate the dawn of manned flight, setting a speed record for that particular course.

But since there was no record on the books at the time, any speed would have done it.

In North Carolina, he told reporters that the Voyager flight was sort of like putting a big gas tank on a car and driving across the country without stopping.

It was a cold cut for the folks at Mojave Airport, but they declined to shoot back. Burt Rutan finally broke that code of silence when he noted that speed records between airports, like the one set last week by the first man to break the sound barrier, really didn’t amount to much. Especially since there wasn’t a record there to break.

“Some of these records are ridiculous,” he said.

Rutan cited the case involving a friend of his who packed a picnic lunch in his small plane and took off from Van Nuys to Palm Springs to establish a speed record between those cities. But the pilot stopped somewhere along the way and ate his lunch. Then he continued on and landed, and now holds the speed record between Van Nuys and Palm Springs.

“It’s 17 m.p.h.,” Rutan said.

Times medical writer Harry Nelson in Mojave also contributed to this story.