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Rutan Retrospective Gallery

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

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Rutan posed against the Tehachapis with three early prototypes: the 18 hp Quickie, the twin-engine Defiant, and the VariEze.
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His first homebuilt design, the VariViggen, had the style of a fighter. The little tabs on the elevators were called “sparrow strainers.”
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The VariViggen’s cockpit was pure fighter too, with instruments picked up from the then-ample supply of cheap military surplus.
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Rutan and Garrison study the VariEze’s cowling while Peter Lert wonders where in the cockpit he will put his Althochdeutsch dictionary.
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Flying typically relied on telephoto air-to-air photography. Here, over a rare smogless Burbank, was the Defiant in wide angle.
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Predator, a three-surface ag plane, was unlucky: It had problems from the start, and ended up destroyed in a takeoff accident.
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The DARPA-commissioned twin nicknamed SMUT would enjoy a second incarnation as a Bronco-style aft-loading twin-boom.
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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.
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Rutan’s last personal airplane, the symmetry-free Boomerang, displayed a fanciful virtuosity of design that remains unsurpassed.
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Rutan and Richard Branson signal their approval of Virgin Mother Ship Eve, whose nose art appears incongruously non-Virginal.
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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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