Rutan Retrospective Gallery

Here is a gallery of Rutan designs harvested from Flying's files, dating back as far as 1975.

Rutan posed against the Tehachapis with three early prototypes: the 18 hp Quickie, the twin-engine Defiant, and the VariEze.

His first homebuilt design, the VariViggen, had the style of a fighter. The little tabs on the elevators were called “sparrow strainers.”

The VariViggen’s cockpit was pure fighter too, with instruments picked up from the then-ample supply of cheap military surplus.

Rutan and Garrison study the VariEze’s cowling while Peter Lert wonders where in the cockpit he will put his Althochdeutsch dictionary.

Flying typically relied on telephoto air-to-air photography. Here, over a rare smogless Burbank, was the Defiant in wide angle.

Predator, a three-surface ag plane, was unlucky: It had problems from the start, and ended up destroyed in a takeoff accident.

The DARPA-commissioned twin nicknamed SMUT would enjoy a second incarnation as a Bronco-style aft-loading twin-boom.

Ares was a sort of mini-Warthog, a ground attack airplane with a single jet intake on one side and a monster Gatling gun on the other.

Rutan’s last personal airplane, the symmetry-free Boomerang, displayed a fanciful virtuosity of design that remains unsurpassed.

Rutan and Richard Branson signal their approval of Virgin Mother Ship Eve, whose nose art appears incongruously non-Virginal.

The N number of the X-Prize winner’s mothership referred to the altitude it would have to reach: 318,000 feet above sea level.

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