Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.
Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County and a southern arm is in Los Angeles County. The hub of the base is Edwards, California. Established in the 1930s as Muroc Field, the facility was renamed Muroc Army Airfield and then Muroc Air Force Base before its final renaming in 1950 for World War II USAAF veteran and test pilot Capt. Glen Edwards.
Richard "Dick" Ira Bong was a United States Army Air Forces major and Medal of Honor recipient in World War II. He was one of the most decorated American fighter pilots and the country's top flying ace in the war, credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft, all with the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter. He died in California while testing a Lockheed P-80 jet fighter shortly before the war ended. Bong was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1986 and has several commemorative monuments named in his honor around the world, including an airport, two bridges, a theater, a veterans historical center, a recreation area, a neighborhood terrace, and several avenues and streets, including the street leading to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
Scaled Composites is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman. It is located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, United States. Founded to develop experimental aircraft, the company now focuses on designing and developing concept craft and prototype fabrication processes for aircraft and other vehicles. It is known for unconventional designs, for its use of non-metal, composite materials, and for winning the Ansari X Prize with its experimental spacecraft SpaceShipOne.
The Rutan Model 76 Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. It was piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base's 15,000 foot runway in the Mojave Desert on December 14, 1986, and ended 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds later on December 23, setting a flight endurance record. The aircraft flew westerly 26,366 statute miles at an average altitude of 11,000 feet (3,350 m).
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is a retired American aerospace engineer and entrepreneur noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, and energy-efficient air and space craft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager, which in 1986 was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which in 2006 set the world record for the fastest and longest nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation flight in history. In 2004, Rutan's sub-orbital spaceplane design SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space, winning the Ansari X-Prize that year for achieving the feat twice within a two-week period.
Robert Lee "Hoot" Gibson, , is a former American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, and aeronautical engineer. A retired NASA astronaut, he also served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1992 to 1994. Today Gibson is active as a professional pilot, racing regularly at the annual Reno Air Races. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003 and the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2013, and has received several military decorations throughout his career.
Jeana Lee Yeager is an American aviator. She co-piloted, along with Dick Rutan, the first non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world in the Rutan Voyager aircraft from December 14 to 23, 1986. The flight took 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds and covered 24,986 miles (40,211 km), almost doubling the old distance record set by a Boeing B-52 strategic bomber in 1962.
The Scaled Composites Model 311 Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer is an aircraft designed by Burt Rutan in which Steve Fossett first flew a solo nonstop airplane flight around the world in slightly more than 67 hours. The flight speed of 342 miles per hour (550 km/h) set the world record for the fastest nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation, beating the mark set by the previous Rutan-designed Voyager aircraft at 9 days 3 minutes and a top speed of 116 miles per hour (187 km/h).
Richard Alan Searfoss was an American aviator who was United States Air Force colonel, NASA astronaut and test pilot.
The Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field is in Mojave, California, United States, at an elevation of 2,801 feet (854 m). It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration on June 17, 2004. The facility covers 2,998 acres and has three runways.
The Rutan Model 61 Long-EZ is a tandem 2-seater homebuilt aircraft designed by Burt Rutan's Rutan Aircraft Factory. The Long-EZ has a canard layout, a swept wing with wingtip rudders, and a pusher engine and propeller. The tricycle landing gear has fixed main wheels with streamlined spats and a retractable nosewheel. Its predecessor was the VariEze, plans for which were first available to homebuilders in 1976. The prototype Long-EZ, N79RA, first flew on June 12, 1979.
XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherlands. XCOR was formed in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team, and ceased operations in 2017.
The Rocket Racing League was a racing league that planned to use rocket-powered aircraft to race a closed-circuit air racetrack. Founded in 2005, the league made its first public flights in 2010 and was working to begin regular racing seasons. The "Rocket Racers" were slated to compete in the air and on a virtual racetrack easily viewed by a live audience as well as projected on large screen and handheld electronic displays.
The XCOR EZ-Rocket was a test platform for the XCOR XR-4A3 rocket propulsion system. The airplane was a modified Rutan Long-EZ, with the propeller replaced by first one, then later a pair of pressure-fed regeneratively cooled liquid-fueled rocket engines and an underslung fuel tank. The engines were restartable in flight, and were contained within Kevlar armor shielding. The EZ-Rocket was registered as an experimental aircraft.
The flight endurance record is the longest amount of time an aircraft of a particular category spent in flight without landing. It can be a solo event, or multiple people can take turns piloting the aircraft, as long as all pilots remain in the aircraft. The limit initially was the amount of fuel that could be stored for the flight, but aerial refueling extended that parameter. Due to safety concerns, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) no longer recognizes new records for the duration of crewed airplane or glider flights and has never recognized any duration records for helicopters.
The De la Vaulx Medal is an aviation award presented by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the international aviation standard setting and record-keeping body. The award was established in 1933 in memory of the Comte de La Vaulx, who was a founder and president of the FAI.
Reaching for the Skies was an aviation documentary TV series made by BBC Pebble Mill in association with CBS Fox. The first episode was transmitted in the United Kingdom on 12 September 1988 and in the US in 1989.
