Welcome to BRAB, Burt Rutan’s online Autobiography. Burt is not publishing a printed book. What you will find here is huge, and cannot fit in a book. Also, its content is not constrained by the limitations of a book publisher. The Internet has Thousands of Websites that describe Burt, but much of this information is not accurate. That fact is what encouraged him in 2020 to publish BRAB - his detailed personal recollection of his life experience. Currently BRAB is just partially complete and is being updated as new information is written. Unlike typical autobiographies, you will find the content to be unusually candid. BRAB includes the bad as well as the good - Burt's failures are included, along with his successes. The BRAB goal is to make available to the reader, for free download, the details of his incredible life and accomplishments. You will find hundreds of fun personal stories, thousands of photos, hundreds of videos, unpublished drawings of aircraft, hundreds of his presentations and awards, etc. Most of these details are not available anywhere else. All stories, data, drawings, photos & videos are real. BRAB has NO AI-generated information. “All BRAB content is intended to be free and not used by anyone who would charge money for it. For example, it is not approved for you to use large portions of it for a book that you intend to sell. You do not need our permission to distribute parts of BRAB to anyone. If you do distribute, please add a note that refers to it being obtained from burtrutan.com and is never to be used with the intent to charge money for its use.” Chapter 63 has undergone a major update. It is now the largest and the most interesting chapter in BRAB. This New May 24, 2026 Update is over 200 pages long and has hundreds of personal photos - many of which are not available anywhere else. It lists the 192 famous people Burt has personally met. For many of them, it tells detailed stories of his interface with them. Why is it the most interesting? It includes many details of events that would never be found in a person's autobiography - things that he hopes would never be revealed on the Internet. Burt has worked for more than four years researching and writing this new update. What follows is organized into ten Sections and ninety Chapters. Publishing this content is an on-going process, with new Chapters and Links being added as they are written/sourced. Unlike a printed book, all information is continuously updated and corrected, so the reader always has the most current information. Burt’s son Jeff is doing the job of website design and organization. Burt does not expect to be able to publish all the chapters in his remaining lifetime. However, it is possible that his family (brother, sister, two children, three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren) will update and add appropriate content after his passing. 1 • Take a look at the Legacy Prologue - Timeline for an overview in chart form. 2 • Read the Section Summaries. These are brief descriptions of the content of the Chapters and a list of the Section’s Chapters. 3 • Scan the Table of Contents (TOC) to get familiar with the ninety Chapter names. The highlighted/clickable ones are published. 4 • If your interest is Aircraft, read in order Chapters 63, 29, 82, 9, 19, 33, 32, 17 and 18. 5 • If your interest is Spacecraft, read Chapters 63, 33 and 35. 6 • If your interest is Management or Education, read in order Chapters 63, 55, 50, 21, 85, 23, 14, 18 and 56. 7 • If your interest is Medicine, read Chapter 67. The Links Page has more than 200 items - a wealth of information about Burt. If you select Chapter Photo Galleries you can see over 4,800 photos arranged in the 90 Chapters. “… And that was the moment I decided ‘for absolute certain’ I wanted to be an aircraft designer.” –Burt Rutan, at the B-36 formation flyover viewing in Chapter 3 Burt Rutan was born on June 17, 1943, during World War II. Coincidentally, this was also the day the Lockheed Skunk Works was founded, as well as the day the first drawings of the Howard Hughes HK-1 Spruce Goose were created. As he grew up, most of Burt’s school friends pursued opportunities to excel in school sports. But the Seventh Day Adventist Church, of which his family were members, forbade activities on Saturdays, on the basis that the Sabbath was a day of rest. While this religious restriction was constraining, it also created the opportunity for his father, brother, sister & young Burt himself, to take up aviation - an interest that had no prior history in the Rutan family tree. As a young teen growing up in the 1950’s, it was model airplanes - not sports, motorcycles, cars or rock n’ roll - that sparked his interest, fulfilled his curiosity & challenged his creative mind. He, along with his dentist father Pop & both his siblings ultimately charted their own career paths in aviation. His acceptance into the “Learn by doing” California Polytechnic College in 1961 provided Burt with the skills, that would not only affirm his choice of career, but also prepare him for those “next steps” after college. Twenty six years later he was awarded Cal Poly’s first Honorary Doctorate Degree as he delivered its 1987 commencement address. In his Senior year at Cal Poly, Burt won the AIAA National Student Design award, & in accepting it, was thrilled to meet the Apollo moon program architect - Werner von Braun. This encounter with his hero would prove to be one of the most inspiring moments of his life. “What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top US Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees & monkeys.” –Douglas Brinkley Burt graduated from college during the middle of the Apollo Moon Program. As a result, there was no shortage of jobs available for new engineering graduates. It might come as a surprise to note, that of the offers available to him, he selected the one with the lowest salary. Right out of college, Burt began his career as a Civilian Flight Test Engineer for the United States Air Force. Since flight testing was critical to his future success as an airplane developer, it was the most important decision he ever made. Burt started this job as an inexperienced 21-year old & ended it with the courage & the credentials he would need to make history with all-new research aircraft. After 7 years of fast-paced, hard-work, he made a dramatic change - from a Government job fighting for a Vietnam victory, to designing light aircraft with a new family. “The homebuilts did it first, & then the factories copied them.” –Peter Garrison In this Section Burt reveals the single obsession that ultimately directed his entire career path. What began in college as a curiosity about a potentially fatal airplane design flaw, was fueled to a personal passion while working as a Civilian Flight Test Engineer for the United States Air Force. It was there that Burt experienced firsthand, the terror of being caught in the deadly stall/spin. It was also there, that attending the funerals of fellow test pilots was an all-too-common part of the workweek. At just 22 years old, Burt was newly-graduated with a wife, two babies & the beginnings of a homebuilt airplane in the garage. He was testing fighter jets by day, & spending all other waking moments exploring design configurations on his quest to find the fix that had eluded aviators since the Wright Brothers. What resulted was the incredibly nimble VariViggen, which sported the configuration needed to allow the canard to stall while the wing is not stalled during aggressive maneuvering. This feature solved the stall/spin safety issue. Little did Burt know that his garage hobby creation & his Air Force spin testing, would lead him to launch two startup businesses, which not only boasted unprecedented safety records, but would eventually influence the entire world of aviation. These humble beginnings would also lead to 2 historic milestones. The stories in these Chapters surround that first startup - Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF) in which a tiny team of people produced & flight tested 18 completely new manned aircraft designs in only 11 years (Boomerang was flown in 1996). RAF also produced a research prototype airplane for NASA, a special Wing Ship for the Navy & a proof-of-concept prototype military trainer for an Aerospace Prime corporation. “Other companies did two or three of these things (design, build, instrument, flight test & report), but SCALED didn’t have a competitor who did them all.” –Burt Rutan As the success of Burt’s first company - Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF) - escalated, Burt began to recognize a potentially huge market for prototype development & flight testing for customers other than homebuilders. To tap into that field, however, would require a significantly larger staff & facility. SCALED Composites was founded & incorporated in 1982 to pursue that goal. SCALED was a tiny startup company, yet it attracted the most sophisticated aerospace customers. It quickly became the world’s most productive research aircraft company, bringing into fruition the “first flight” of an astounding 31 manned research aircraft & 17 unmanned projects in just 29 years. Like RAF, SCALED also achieved its own historic milestone with the first non-government manned space program. All this was accomplished with small teams of eclectic, extraordinary characters who thrived under Burt’s leadership philosophy of “have fun!” Together they produced results in the Mojave Desert that no competitor was able to emulate. SCALED had just 26 employees when the Starship prototype flew in 1983 & 127 employees when SpaceShipOne flew out of the atmosphere in 2004. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work & give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast & endless sea.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets & mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, & wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, & we need them all.” –Sir Arthur C. Clarke "Whenever there's a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back & find a time period when the consensus was 'Well, that's nonsense!' So what that means is that a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense." –Burt Rutan In Section 5 Burt goes into a teaching mode - to reveal the methods he discovered & then used in his two entrepreneur businesses. He didn’t set out to be a unique manager or to study management theories & methods. His education focused on Engineering, not Management. He motivated people around him to copy his own ethics & efficiency in getting the tasks done quickly, with quality & with the assurance to avoid financial failure. He had the title of Manager during his Air Force years (1965 to 1972). However, in Kansas at Bede he realized there’s a very big difference between a Government Manager who operates within detailed specific rules & one in a commercial business who is responsible to hire & fire the employees & responsible for generating the rules himself. The methods Burt used resulted in consistent profitability in spite of the fact that many contracts were structured as fixed price. Chapters 55, 57 & 58 can be considered Case-Studies for teaching how to get the most from a staff that’s continuously challenged to solve problems by inventing new solutions. “Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.” –Wernher von Braun “…reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.” –Kelly Johnson - Skunk Works Rule 14 How does an Airplane Designer working in the Mojave Desert get the opportunity to: • Play pool with Paul Newman. • Chat or eat with 3 US Presidents & 5 State Governors. • Bring food to eat with Harrison Ford in his home, when he was confined to a wheelchair. • Cruise Southeast Asia, Japan & China with a Microsoft co-founder & an Apple co-founder. • Chat with three CIA Directors. • Meet Werner von Braun, the tech leader of the Apollo moon program. • Enjoy a home barbecue cooked by a von Braun rocket scientist. • Have lunch (without wine) with Ernest & Julio Gallo on a nuclear Aircraft Carrier. • Have lunch with the discoverers of the element Plutonium & the planet Pluto. • Play golf with 13 PGA professional golfers, including Arnold Palmer & an Olympic Gold Medalist. • Open a new Disneyland ride with George Lucas. • Dine with Jimmy Doolittle & James Stewart. • Be visited unannounced & grilled by General Curtis LeMay. • Meet Jack Northrop, Kelly Johnson & the key execs of Beechcraft, Cessna, TaylorCraft, Google & Learjet. • Be confined alone with Elon Musk for 5 hours in a tiny room, twice. • And meet Charles Lindbergh, long after he became a recluse? For the first time, Burt shares the details of his interfaces with these & hundreds of interesting people in a Section Six update for Chapter 63 (Note: Chapters 64, 65 & 66 will not be published because their stories are included in the huge update for Chapter 63). “While playing a 4-hour round of golf with a stranger, you learn more about his character than if you work with him for a year - his honesty, patience, temper, friendliness & belief in a God.” –Burt Rutan “The purpose of man's existence on Earth is to fly. Time not spent flying or preparing to fly is wasted.” –Les Berven The stories in this Section share some of Burt’s most significant adventures in his personal life when he wasn’t developing & testing aircraft & spaceships. Burt’s single-minded drive to design, build & fly prototype aircraft extolled a cost on his health, & in particular, his heart (Chapter 67). After decades, events made him review & change his lifestyle. This would settle his home life, reunite him with family, bring him closer to his children, & expand his interest in the world around him. Burt had a wide range of other interests: a relationship with the game of golf starting in his teens, manufacturing methods of ancient stone monuments, pre-history high-technology civilizations, and the Younger Dryas Impact on Earth. Burt was the first-flight-pilot on 7 of his own homebuilts (Chapter 72). He was licensed to fly single engine land planes, multi engine land planes, single engine seaplanes & helicopters, and held an instrument flight rating. “Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, & others do just the same with their time.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Burt’s attempt to retire was successful - but only for a few months. His decision to retire early, & the subsequent move to a location more favorable to his heart health challenges, turned out to be a more unorthodox transition than expected. Little did Burt realize what new projects awaited him after his official retirement in 2010 - including his work for Paul Allen, serving on the Board of Directors for Stratolaunch - the world’s largest aircraft, & the agonizing challenges of a failed research airplane. In 2014, Burt embarked on comprehensive tours of aerospace museums. Starting in 2020, Burt’s family relocated to North Idaho, with 14 family members across 6 households living within 30 minutes of each other. Section 8 includes his family life, assessment of accomplishments, retirement attempts, and his 49th manned aircraft. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” –Abraham Lincoln This Section is an introduction to answer the question “Who is Burt Rutan?” It includes details about a great number of aircraft & spacecraft designs. All 49 manned research aircraft in which Burt was involved are shown (all developed in only 43 years). For the first time anywhere, hundreds of preliminary designs that were never built are revealed, alongside Burt’s major recognitions & notable press coverage items. “In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together & the music that brings harmony.“ –Friedrich Nietzsche This section has details about Burt’s family tree, his romantic relationships, family stories & Pop Rutan’s memoirs. Burt’s son & daughter-in-law, Jeff & Angel Rutan, created a large quilt representing significant aircraft in Burt & his wife’s lives. This quilt, gifted to Burt & Tonya in 2020, was dubbed “The BRAB Quilt.” The representation of that quilt serves as a menu to access photo galleries for each of the 49 manned aircraft developed & flown by Burt and/or under his leadership at SCALED, as well as other aircraft in which Burt was involved.