Remembering My Time With Dick Rutan

Dick Rutan died earlier last month. This caused me to revisit a time in my life when I worked for him, flew with him, and shared in the misadventures of a failed project with him.

I worked for Dick from the Summer of 1998 to Spring 1999 while he was on his second attempt at being the first to go around the world in a balloon non-stop and non-refueled. He was already famous for his circumnavigation of Earth in the Voyager in 1986. That aircraft hangs in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC where I grew up. I spent a lot of time in that museum in my youth and already imagined myself as an aerospace engineer, so any Rutan project was tantalizing.

In 1998 I was studying engineering in Montreal. When I heard of Dick’s ballooning ambitions I traveled to Mojave to try to land a job on the project by just showing up.

It worked.

Here are a few vignettes from that era.

Dick the scamp

Dick was due to give a talk at the EAA Museum during Airventure 1998 in Oshkosh, WI. I was tagging along with him. We arrived a bit late at the venue and we entered through the main doors at the back of the auditorium. The crowd was already thick and facing the stage anticipating the arrival of the aviation legend. Since they were all facing away, nobody noticed our arrival. Dick moved forwards through the mass of people. He paused behind someone and muttered “Do you think he’s even going to show up?” then moved ahead. He did this to a few people, saying things along the lines of “How long is he going to make us wait?” and “Who does this guy think he is?” all the while moving ahead as if nothing had been said.

His victims were quite amused by their brush with the pilot after they figured out who was saying these things.

Dick says things

At that same Oshkosh event he had been talking mostly about his experience flying the Voyager. That is what he was known for. I remember asking Dick if the “Balloon Project” was going to be as great as the Voyager project.

He said: “It’s going to be even better.”

The “Balloon Project” was a failure. His first attempt ended with him bailing out before his balloon crashed and burned somewhere in the Midwest.

The second attempt was perpetually held in limbo state by lack of funds. It seemed nobody wanted to give us any money (I wonder why?). My emails to my parents are rundowns of all the ways in which we failed to unlock some much needed funds from rich people.

Dick had choice words for all these people and organizations who had all the money but none of the spirit and tenacity and courage that he had in spades.

But this limbo state also made my experience special. Had we gotten funding, we would have hired a bunch of people and would have gone into a pressure-cooker work environment. I had very little experience about anything at the time, so I would have been just one worker bee among others. It wouldn’t have been the same.

The way things worked out the project was at best half-dead until it was fully dead. I was the only person working apart from a tiny team of long-time Rutan acolytes. I talked directly with Dick and crew chief Bruce Evans on a regular basis. Dick called on me for various things, including helping him fly his hot air balloon.

The result is I got a meaningfully close look at the man, and I am grateful for it.

Dick Rutan, me and Bruce Evans in front the habitable high-altitude ballooning capsule I was helping to build.

Adventure is the essence of life

He wrote this on a poster of the voyager he gifted me: “Adventure is the Essence of Life.”

Even after hearing many of the stories first hand, it is still striking to read his obituary in the media. His collection of adventures lived are something to behold.

He could have stopped after Voyager and just talked about that on the speaking circuit for the rest of his life. But that’s not Dick.

One day he was sitting in the office in the balloon hangar bemoaning the state of affairs. He must have just been rejected for funding yet again and must have really felt that his chance was slipping away.

He said somberly: “I would hate it if the greatest thing I’ll ever do is behind me”.

He was over 60 at the time and already an aviation legend. But this really bugged him. He was made to go further and higher. What do you do after you get there?

“Life is a shit sandwich”

I remember a late evening meeting with a representative of a very big company headed by a very rich guy. We were on our last gasps but had high hopes. The funds would amount to a rounding error in their books. After the main meeting, Dick spoke alone with the rep.

I was poking around in the shop, heart in my stomach as I waited for the news.

He emerged gloomy. Burned again.

He found me and said: “Well Oliver, life is a shit sandwich and every other day you have to take a big bite.”

So much for optimism. Earlier in the project he had been answering any doubt about our chances with the mantra “it’s darkest before dawn.” We were now in the “shit sandwich” phase.

About a month later the Breitling Orbiter completed its circumnavigation of the planet and Dick’s ballooning ambitions were forever put to rest.

The Certified Flight Instructor

After the project died for good Dick offered to give me flying lessons. He would get me to my first solo in a power plane (I was already a solo glider pilot). After he died I spotted a number of people on social media reminiscing about their time learning to fly from Dick.

He loved to share the art of flying.

This piece of plastic is historic (or not)

One day towards waning days of the project he said he wanted to give me something. It was a piece of transparent plastic. “It’s from when we made the windows for the Voyager. You could go to the National Air and Space Museum, hold this up to the window of the Voyager, and it will fit perfectly.” Supposedly as they cut the pieces of plastic that made up the window, he kept a piece of discarded plastic as a keepsake.

I have no idea if this piece of plastic is actually from the Voyager. Maybe he kept it for fifteen years and finally decided to part with it, or maybe Dick just felt like seeing my eyes light up for a piece of trash. I wouldn’t put it past him, the scamp that he was.

That plastic may not have been from Voyager but it was definitely from Dick: full of optimism and historical aspirations but it requires one to be firmly grounded.

Goodbye Dick

Well Dick, you’ve taken the last bite of your shit sandwich.

Thanks for letting me tag along during a tiny sliver of your incredible life. It may not have been the most glorious part of your life, but for me it was a highlight.