This is so sad, loss of a good pilot. I only saw Dick fly once, a group of us had flown our LongEz’s and VariEz’s down to Mojave for his brother, Burt Rutan’s birthday.

Dick took out his LongEz, and I realized he had more piloting skills in his little finger than I’d ever have. That plane did things at 100 feet that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing at 5000 feet.

People know him as 1 of the two who flew voyager, and the article on touches on a tiny fraction of the adventures he had in his life. Seemed like a life well lived.

Brother of Burt Rutan, designer of X Prize winning SpaceShipOne.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan

Amazing documentary about the around the world flight (4 parts on YouTube).

There are so many crazy parts to the flight. Just consider the takeoff where the wingtips were scraping the runway and one winglet fell off. Also that Rutan and Yeager just broke up and still did the flight together! The documentaey also has great 90s vibes.

https://youtu.be/MYW6X46qWG0?si=nft-iNsY2WisL7qZ

He died in my hometown.

I have met his brother Burt a few times at local events when he was around more. After looking at the pics I realized that was the guy I kept seeing around town that "looked like Burt Rutan" but wasn't him. Very likely I have met Dick as well at events but did not know who he was.

Sad to see...but what a life lived.

This is sad. I saw Voyager at Oshkosh 1987 for its last outdoor appearance and it was an influential experience to feel close to history.

Kinda feels like an era is ending in aerospace as his generation passes away. We went from all sorts of grandiose ideas to building nothing but quadcopter shaped objects because you don't need to understand aerodynamics to build a quadcopter.

The round-the-world trip took just over 9 days. What do you do up in the air in a tube with one other person for 9 days straight, especially when any nonessential payload could compromise your goal?