Voyager

Front Cover
"On December 14, 1986, Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan took off from Edwards Air Force Base, in California's Mojave Desert, on their history-making flight--the first to circle the globe nonstop without refueling. The flight required almost superhuman physical and psychological effort--the two pilots spending nine days in an unpressurized cockpit, 3 1/2 feet wide by 7 feet long. The plane weighed less than an automobile (2,000 pounds empty) and carried 1,200 gallons of fuel. The nine-day flight took them west over the Pacific through violent winds and turbulences, through life-threatening mechanical failures, at times over forbidden countries. Both pilots experienced high spirits and exhausting emotional letdowns--until finally, on December 23, 48 hours ahead of schedule, Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan completed the circle with their triumphal landing. Now they tell in vivid detail what it was like to make the flight, what happened during the years of dreaming, planning, and hard work that culminated in the triumph of Voyager, and what it was in their own lives that led them to their extraordinary partnership and undertaking. They take us from their growing-up years (he, racing motorcycles and learning to fly at fifteen; she, isolated, shy, but most of all fearless, from a very early age making horses the center of her life and training the 'untrainable'); through his years as a fighter jock, volunteering for 105 missions over North Vietnam; through her years of training to be the first woman in space (the project, privately funded, was ultimately abandoned); to their fateful meeting at an airshow in California, which led to the 'wild idea' of a revolutionary aeronautic exploit and to its fulfillment. We follow them through the years of grueling effort, of alternating setbacks and successes; through the struggle to raise funds to keep the project alive without any government support; through the building and testing of Voyager; to the ultimate completion of their great adventure. A fantastic story of two extraordinary spirits, and of a classic American against-all-odds achievement."--Dust jacket.

From inside the book

Contents

Oh Dark Thirty
3
Jeana
25
Design
40
Copyright

14 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1987)

Phil Patton was born Lewis Foster Patton in Durham, North Carolina on March 23, 1952. He received a bachelor's degree in English and history from Harvard University in 1974 and a master's degree in comparative literature from Columbia University in 1975. He worked briefly as a fact-checker for Esquire and as the editor of Delta's in-flight magazine, but decided to become a freelance writer. He wrote about technology and design for several publications including Art in America, Esquire, Smithsonian, Architectural Digest, and Wired. For many years he wrote on design for the Home section of The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. His first book, Razzle-Dazzle: The Curious Marriage of Television and Professional Football, was published in 1984. His other books include Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway, Made in U.S.A.: The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America, Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile, and Michael Graves Designs: The Art of the Everyday Object. He taught in the design criticism program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and helped develop several museum shows, as either a curator or a consultant. He died from complications of emphysema on September 22, 2015 at the age of 63.

Bibliographic information