The Voyager Airplane

Reading audio



2004-3-30

(THEME)

ANNCR:

EXPLORATIONS -- a program in Special English by the Voice of
America.

It was called the last great goal
in flying. It would be a flight around the world without stopping or
adding more fuel. Today, Frank Oliver and Doug Johnson tell about a
special plane called Voyager and the effort to set a difficult world
record.

VOICE ONE:

Voyager began as a quick drawing on a small piece of paper. Six
years later, the drawing was a plane that made history.

Many people gave their time, energy and money to help make the
flight happen. But three people had lead parts in the event. Dick
Rutan. Burt Rutan. And Jeana Yeager.

Dick Rutan was an experienced
flier. He had been a pilot in the United States military during the
war in Vietnam. After the war, he worked as a test pilot. He flew
planes designed by his younger brother Burt.

Burt Rutan was well-known as a designer of experimental planes.
And Jeana Yeager held nine world flight records as a pilot.

VOICE TWO:

One day in early Nineteen-Eighty-One, Dick, Burt and Jeana were
eating in a restaurant in Mojave, California. Burt turned to his
brother and asked a wild question. "How would you like to be the
first person to fly around the world without stopping to re-fuel?"

The three considered the idea. A non-stop flight around the world
without re-fueling was the last flight record to be set. The flight
always had been considered impossible. No plane could carry enough
fuel to fly that far: forty-thousand kilometers.

But now there were new materials for planes. Burt thought he
could build a plane that could make the voyage. Dick and Jeana
thought they could fly it. No one could think of a good reason not
to try.

Burt picked up a small piece of paper. He drew an airplane that
looked like a giant wing, and not much more. That was the beginning.

VOICE ONE:

Not since the days of Orville and Wilbur Wright had the people
making a record flight designed and built their own aircraft. Dick,
Burt and Jeana did. Some people thought their Voyager project was
both impossible and foolish. Everyone knew it would be dangerous.

The Voyager crew worked on the plane in a small building at an
airport in California's Mojave Desert. Dick, Burt and Jeana received
no government money. Instead, they got small amounts of money from
lots of different people.

As news of the project spread, more and more people offered to
help. There were aviation engineers and workers from the space
agency's experimental plane project. Several airplane companies
offered equipment to be used in the plane. When Voyager was
finished, it had two-million dollars' worth of parts in it.

VOICE TWO:

Burt Rutan had built light-weight planes before. He knew a normal
plane made of aluminum metal could not make a trip around the world
without adding fuel. So his solution was to build Voyager almost
completely out of new materials. The materials were very light, but
very strong. This meant Voyager could lift and carry many times its
weight in fuel.

The finished plane weighed just nine-hundred kilograms, about the
weight of a small car. The full load of fuel weighed three times
that much, about three-thousand kilograms. Voyager was not built to
be a fast plane. It flew about one-hundred seventy-five kilometers
an hour.

VOICE ONE:

The main wing of the finished
plane was more than thirty-three meters across. That is wider than
the main wing on today's big passenger planes. The center part of
the plane held the crew. And on either side of this body were two
long fuel tanks.

In fact, almost all of the Voyager was a fuel tank. Seventeen
separate containers were squeezed into every possible space. During
the flight, the pilots had to move fuel from container to container
to keep the plane balanced. One engine at each end of the body of
the plane provided power.

The area for the two pilots was unbelievably small. It was just
one meter wide by two-and-one-quarter meters long. The person flying
the plane sat in the pilot's seat. The other person had to lie down
at all times.

VOICE TWO:

After many test flights, the Voyager was finally ready in
December, Nineteen-Eighty-Six. The best weather for flying around
the world is from June to August. That time was far past. But the
pilots were tired of delays. They made the decision to take-off,
knowing the weather might be bad.

On December Fourteenth, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager walked around
the plane one more time. It looked like a giant white flying insect.
They were going to be trusting their lives to this strange plane for
the next nine days.

Dick climbed into the only seat. Jeana lay on the floor. They
were ready to go. Flight controllers at Edwards Air Force Base in
California cleared them for a trip no one had ever attempted before.

VOICE ONE:

The long, thin wings of the plane were so loaded with fuel that
they almost touched the ground. Voyager began to move down the
runway, slowly. But something was wrong. The ends of the wings were
not lifting.

Burt Rutan sent a radio message to his brother to lift the
plane's nose. "Pull back on the stick!" he screamed. "Pull back!"
But Dick did not hear the warning. And he did not see the wings. He
was looking straight ahead.

Voyager was getting dangerously close to the end of the runway.
It appeared about to crash. Finally, just in time, the long wings
swept up. The plane leaped into the air.

Planes following Voyager could see that the ends of the wings
were badly damaged. Dick turned the plane so the force of air
currents would break off the broken ends. Then he aimed Voyager out
over the Pacific Ocean.

VOICE TWO:

Weight was the main consideration in designing the experimental
plane. Not safety. Not comfort. Voyager did not have most of the
normal safety equipment of modern planes. There were no special
materials to block the noise of the engines. And space for the
pilots was so tight they had great difficulty changing places.

Voyager's long wings moved up and down as the winds changed. It
seemed to sail on waves of air, just like a sailboat on ocean waves.
This motion meant the flight was extremely rough.

VOICE ONE:

It was not an enjoyable trip. Dick and Jeana were always tense.
At the end of the second day, the weather expert for the flight
warned of trouble. Voyager was heading for an ocean storm. Dick was
able to fly close to the storm and ride its winds.

On the third day, Voyager was in trouble again. It had to fly
between huge thunderhead clouds on one side and Vietnam's airspace
on the other. Dick was able to keep the plane safely in the middle.

Over Africa, the two pilots struggled with continuous stormy
weather. Dick had flown almost all of the first sixty hours of the
flight. Then he changed places with Jeana for short periods. Both
were extremely tired.

Suddenly, a red warning light turned on. It was a signal that
there was not enough oil in one engine. Dick and Jeana had been so
busy trying to fly around bad weather and mountains that they had
forgotten to watch the oil level. But luck stayed with them. They
added the necessary oil. The engine was not damaged.

VOICE TWO:

Once past the violent weather over Africa, Dick and Jeana began
planning the way home. A computer confirmed that they had enough
fuel left to make it. But as they flew up the coast of Mexico, the
engine on the back of the plane failed. Fuel had stopped flowing to
it.

The more powerful front engine already had been shut down earlier
to save fuel. With neither engine working, Voyager quickly began to
lose speed and height. The plane fell for five minutes. Dick finally
got the front engine started again. Then fuel started flowing to the
back engine, and it began to work again, too.

VOICE ONE:

Nine days after take-off, Voyager landed smoothly at Edwards Air
Force Base in California. It had completed a
forty-thousand-kilometer flight around the world. It had not
stopped. And it had not re-fueled.

Dick said after landing: "This was the last major event of
atmospheric flight." Jeana added: "It was a lot more difficult than
we ever imagined."

Burt Rutan's revolutionary plane design had worked. And, with it,
Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager had joined the list of the world's
greatest fliers.

(THEME)

ANNOUNCER:

This Special English program was written by Marilyn Rice
Christiano. Your narrators were Frank Oliver and Doug Johnson. I'm
Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week for another EXPLORATIONS
program on the Voice of America.


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