A garage, a station wagon and a canard

Burt Rutan began in a garage. In 1968 he started building the VariViggen, a canard pusher he tested by mounting a model on top of his station wagon and driving along empty roads. His VariEze of 1975 and Long-EZ of 1979 popularised moldless composite construction among homebuilders, and his brother Dick set records in them. In April 1982 Rutan founded Scaled Composites at Mojave in California to do the same for industry: design and build experimental aircraft quickly. Its first big job, that same year, came from Beechcraft, which wanted an 85 per cent scale prototype of its Starship business aircraft.

Prototypes for hire

Beech bought the company in 1985. In 1988 Beech’s parent Raytheon sold it back to Rutan, who sold it on to Wyman-Gordon, then bought it back with ten investors. Through it all Scaled built prototypes for other people at remarkable speed: the ATTT tandem-wing transport, the Triumph business jet, the ARES ground-attack demonstrator, the Pond Racer, the Williams V-Jet II that inspired the Eclipse 500, the Proteus high-altitude relay aircraft, and pieces of the DC-X and the NASA X-38. Rutan’s rule on weight was blunt. He told his staff that if a finished part came down when thrown into the air, it was too heavy.

SpaceShipOne

In April 2003 Scaled revealed that it was building a private spacecraft to win the Ansari X Prize, with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen secretly paying the roughly $25 million bill. SpaceShipOne was carried aloft by the twin-jet White Knight and used a hybrid rocket and a feathering tail for re-entry. On 17 December 2003, the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, Brian Binnie took it supersonic. On 21 June 2004 Mike Melvill flew it past 100 km, the first privately funded human spaceflight, and flights on 29 September and 4 October won the $10 million prize. Rutan then retired it rather than risk it.

Around the world, and the widest wings

Scaled built the GlobalFlyer for Steve Fossett, who flew it alone around the world without stopping or refuelling in 67 hours in March 2005, and then made the longest flight in history, 41,467 km, in 2006. For Virgin Galactic it built SpaceShipTwo and its carrier WhiteKnightTwo. For Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch it built the Model 351, nicknamed Roc, with twin fuselages and a 385 ft wingspan, the largest of any aircraft. It first flew on 13 April 2019, six months after Allen’s death, by which time its launch plans had been scaled back.

Under Northrop Grumman

Space work brought tragedy. On 26 July 2007 an explosion during SpaceShipTwo propulsion testing killed three Scaled employees. On 31 October 2014 VSS Enterprise broke up over the Mojave when the feathering system was unlocked too early, killing co-pilot Michael Alsbury; pilot Peter Siebold survived. Northrop Grumman, already a 40 per cent shareholder, bought the whole company in August 2007, and Rutan retired in April 2011. Scaled has since built the Model 400 jet trainer for the T-X contest and the Model 401 demonstrators, and in 2022 the Mojave airport was named Rutan Field.

Fabrieken

• Mojave facility · Mojave Air and Space Port (Rutan Field), California — Headquarters and workshops since 1982; Stratolaunch hangar built 2012

Mensen

• Burt Rutan · founder — Designed 46 aircraft in his career; Collier Trophy 1986 and 2004; retired 2011
• Paul Allen · investor — Funded SpaceShipOne and Stratolaunch
• Mike Melvill · test pilot — Flew the first private spaceflight, 21 June 2004
• Brian Binnie · test pilot — First supersonic flight 2003; X Prize-winning flight 4 October 2004
• Peter Siebold · engineer and test pilot — Survived the 2014 VSS Enterprise breakup
• Cory Bird · president since April 2019

Records en primeurs

• First privately built aircraft to fly supersonic, SpaceShipOne, 17 December 2003
• First licence for a suborbital crewed rocket flight, issued 1 April 2004
• First privately funded human spaceflight, SpaceShipOne, 21 June 2004
• First solo non-stop non-refuelled flight around the world, GlobalFlyer, 3 March 2005
• Longest aircraft flight in history, 41,467 km, GlobalFlyer, February 2006
• Largest wingspan of any aircraft, Stratolaunch Model 351, 385 ft