Global Hilton

An Interview with Dick Rutan

Dick Rutan says that he and his brother Burt have always had an abnormal fascination for aviation. As they progressed in age their aviation involvement went through stages. From paper airplanes, to model airplanes, to real airplanes. Dick soloed in a Cessna 140 on his sixteenth birthday in 1954. By the time he entered the U.S. Air Force he held a commercial airplane and instructor rating. For the next 20 years he was involved in flying, first as a navigator and then as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Much as that time as a tactical fighter pilot.

He moved to Mojave, California after retiring from the Air Force. There he would eventually meet Jeanne Yeager and together they formed Voyager Aircraft, Inc. Five years later in 1986 the two made the first non-stop, non-refueling flight around the world. Dick's brother Burt built the aircraft out of composite material.

This January Dick and Dave Melton attempted to before the first to fly a balloon around the world. Their attempt made the evening news, not for the attempt, but the solo flight of the balloon.

Balloon Life talked with Dick about that flight and his plans for another attempt. Following is part of that conversation.

Balloon Life: How did you get involved in ballooning?

Dick Rutan: I was a guess speaker at a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale convention in Spain about five years ago. At the convention usually there were just airplane people. At this particular convention there were three different disciplinesfixed wings, sail planes, and balloons. I wanted to experience all forms of aviation and I have gotten to do that fortunately.

I asked the question of the balloonists why no one had ever flown around the world in a balloon. They refereed me to Mr. Don Cameron, who was an official with the FAI at that time. If anybody knows the answer to that he should know. So, I looked him up in the bar and put the question to him. "Don, why hasn't anybody flown around the world in a balloon?"

He said the envelope is not a problem. Nobody has been able to do a capsule. So I thought I knew somebody who could do a capsule and we were off and running.

I bought a Raven RX-7. I found out that there was a lot more to it than what I anticipated. I have the balloon and fly it when ever I can find somebody to get up at O-dark thirty in the morning. Because, it is really hard to do it by yourself.

BL: Was designing the capsule the first step that you took in planning the around the world flight?

DR: Don Cameron told me that there was no problem with the envelope. I figured our discipline was a little bit more advanced to build the capsule. We do structural airborne pressure vessels with wings.

I was the first to recognize that I didn't know anything about an envelope. Frankly, I was pretty naive about how balloons even worked. But, I was a quick learner.

Steve Fossett and I went to Bristol [England] and went through a Roziere pilot training course. We spent a week with Don Cameron's people and we learned all about Roziere flying. That was the year before Steve flew the Atlantic with Tim Cole.

I spend about three years trying to find a sponsor. During that time I built an altitude chamber and we did all the testing and development of this particular closed loop life support system.

Last year we were fortunate enough to receive sponsorship and we teamed up with Richard Abruzzo. Finally convinced Baron [Hilton] to put up the funding for Global Hilton.

BL: At what point did you investigate the feasibility of weather patterns to go around the world?

DR: For about three years I would sit down three or four times a week and copy the jet stream pattern. I watched them develop, break apart in the summer, and then redevelop in the winter time again. So, I thought that I had a pretty good feel for what that was all about.

I call the jet stream the race course. So far, all of us, have gotten in the pits, some are spectators around the outside, some of us actually built the race car, and on the way taxing to the race course from the pits we have problems. Nobody has even got to the race course yet. If you don't count Steve working the jet stream, which I don't. My opinion, the real challenge is going to be dealing with the core of the jet around the world. I don't think that anybody as done that. Breitling sure didn't. Steve was never high enough. All the rest of us, we can't even get to the race track.

BL: How big a problem is political considerations?

DR: There has never been over fly problem in any balloon in the world, period. Libya every time granted Steve over flight permission. Both times. Everybody who ever asked Libya, it was approved. Even China approved Breitling overflight, so that wasn't a problem either.

I would suspect, but I don't know, that Breitling had a whole bunch of mechanical problems. Another thing, they didn't take off in any kind of weather the was suitable for world flight. The way you have to look at this thing is you are always going to run into doldrums and you are going to run into real fast winds around the world. The only one of those that you can control is the first third. And you should inject yourself into the jet stream. That's why the Virgin Challenge was smart enough to look at the winds and know that there is never any jet stream that sits over Switzerland. They went down to Marrakech. If you look at the patterns over the years, the winter time pattern there is that southern jet, it sits right over North Africa. Strangest thing that I have ever seen.

BL: Let's go back to your flight. Once the equipment was ready you pretty much took off the first good available day for launching and upper level winds in Albuquerque?

DR: We were supposed to be ready on [January] 5. That's what we had planned for months. The surface conditions were not favorable for a good launch. They were better on the next day.

On January 6 I think a lot of people were tired and stressed. Just before inflating I went and canceled to wait for a couple of days. As it turned out people were a lot more rested and had learned a lot more [in those few extra days].

BL: Describe how the flight progressed after take off. And, what was your rate of ascent since there has been great speculation about that?

DR: There has been a lot of speculation that we took off too quick. Also speculation that Kevin [Uliassi] took off to fast. Don Cameron came out here during the accident investigation. I said, if we took off to fast and ruined our envelope and caused our own problem explain that to me. And, of course, there is no explanation for what failed compared to [how] we took off.

Probably we did take off a little hot, initially. I have looked at the barograph trace. There were two inversions that we had to go through. In them we actually descending a little bit. We were going up fast. Dave started valving off helium. Then we got it under a real normal rate. We had an average climb rate to 27,000 feet of 362 feet per minute. Once we got out of 10,000 feet we pressurized the cabin. Dave had it under good control all the way up. In fact we just eased into 27,000 feet. We had been level for 12 minutes. We even descended 100 feet. We were perfectly level. We didn't go blasting through float altitude. Although it shouldn't have caused a problem anyway. Then it blew up.

Everything was operating normal. I was really encouraged. After 12 minutes of being level there was a moderate whoosh and a bounce. We looked up and probably a good 50 percent or more of the bottom membrane was totally gone. There wasn't just a rip in the bottom membrane. It was many tears all the way up. Six or eight or more radial tears from the center point of the membrane to where they joined the hot air cone and preceded on up to the top of the envelope.

It keep creaking and popping. Then there was one really loud creak that made my determination that we were going to bail out. I flew in a gas balloon once that had a little leak in it. The balloon rotated. Just like any leak, even in a hot air balloon, it acts like a turning vent. With the large crack the balloon started rotating and I could see the horizon going by probably a degree per second. At that point I knew that the structural integrity was in question. If we had just torn the bottom membrane out Dave and I could have flown it to maybe Europe. When you start getting pops and creaks and tears and radial tears up to the top and the balloon starts spinning on you, all of a sudden your options start vanishing.

As soon as it blew we declared a May Day. The [balloon] climbed to 31,000 feet just on its own.

BL: Why with the tear did the balloon climb?

DR: The helium cell was under pressure. If it had not been under pressure when it blew up it wouldn't have climbed an inch. When the gas cell ruptured the gas expanded down into the hot air cone which gives you more helium in volume. The balloon climbed. Right away Dave pulled on the helium valve which started a slow descent. Through about 12,000 to 15,000 feet we started to depressurize. Took the top hatch out. Dave took some photographs of the top of the envelope from the bottom. That has been helpful for the NTSB to look at.

I think that it was almost two hours later that we decided to abandon the balloon. So it wasn't a decision we made in the heat of the moment. It was under a lot of consultation with the people on the ground. We worked the problem out discussing what was going on and what we were seeing. What it looked like and what our options were.

We were going to take it down and land it. It was going to be a heavy weight landing. Dave is really good. The winds in eastern New Mexico were 20 to 25 knots. I asked what the wind speeds were down track and they were all getting worse. To try and land this heavy weight thing with structural problems and still full of fuel, that wasn't a very good option.

We thought of dropping propane tanks one at a time. You open the helium valve until it starts down and then jettison 300 pounds of propane. That is a big shock and the balloon ascends again. Vent helium until it comes down and you drop another one. Since we heard this ripping and tearing, especially this last real big creak there was concern if we jettison one of these tanks it could put a shock load up through the balloon and may even rip it and we wind up being a streamer. That was a concern.

So all of our options just kind of vaporized and it became evident that we were going to have to abandon [the balloon]. We talked about all this with the people on the ground. We had some good people on the ground. Richard Abruzzo, Mark Sullivan. Really experienced. We decided to bail out.

BL: You have been widely quoted in the press that you told a police officer that the decision to bail out was "Because the rivets were popping."

DR: No, I don't ever remember saying rivets were popping. I don't come from that aluminum world and rivets are not part of my psyche. I am a composite person and I don't hardly ever deal with rivets.

You know after all these years [Don Cameron] says that there is no problem with the envelope. The problem is with the capsule. Then he sells me a balloon that comes apart.

BL: Will you buy another Cameron envelope?

DR: Remains to be seen. Need to find out what went wrong. Somebody from there is going to have to tell me what went wrong. I haven't heard a word from anybody at Cameron as to what happened. Don came out and looked at everything.

It has to be either operator, design, or material. Those are the only options that there are in why the envelope failed.

BL: Have you talked with Kevin Uliassi?

DR: I did. There is another really bad thing that we didn't do. Twenty-twenty hindsight, we didn't really investigate Kevin's problem. We just kind of blew it off that he really didn't know what he was doing. They made some real superficial changes to our appendixes, how they were tied off. We thought, OK we'll go. But God, here's this guy's balloon had a major structural failure and we didn't even look into it that much. Sometimes in the press of the moment and getting going, that is something that you don't want to hear.

BL: How much different is your envelope different from Fossett's, Breitling's, or Uliassi's?

DR: My understanding is that they are all the same design. Same design and same material. They were just upgraded from 270,000 cubic feet to 420,000 cubic feet. That is what I was told by Cameron. Same material, same construction methodology but ramped up. All three, Breitling, Uliassi's and ours.

BL: Have you started building your new gondola yet?

DR: You bet. Not physically but, they are doing a concept in scale. Putting together next year's budget for Barron [Hilton] and we are looking for another envelope.

This time I am going to be a lot more interested in structure, testing, and material then I was last time. You understand that whole thing was Richard Abruzzo's responsibility. He was the balloon expert not me. That was why Dave Melton was flying this thing and I was just backup. When we got in the balloon I said, "Dave nobody has flown one of these things. You have got all the experience. You sit in the seat and fly it. I will take care of everything else, all the radio calls, all the housekeeping. You just concentrate on flying this thing and learning how it works."

Dave is really good. I don't have any criticism with Dave's flying. He leveled us off right below float altitude. The sun was coming up and I was concerned that as the sun heated us up we were going to ease right up into equilibrium at float and spent the rest of the day housekeeping and getting use to our new home for the next two weeks.

Another lesson learned for us is that we have to have a positive termination method. The balloon should land and stay there within a mile after the crew bails out. Otherwise you needlessly endanger people on the ground and we can never do that again.

BL: Will Dave continue in the project with you?

DR: Yes. I asked Shelly, his wife, if she would like to do it again. At the time she was looking at her husband who was laying in the hospital in traction and ready to go into surgery. She said, "I can't imagine not being part of something like this." They are really neat people.

BL: How is Dave doing?

DR: He is home. He went home about a week early from the hospital. He is in a brace.

BL: How does Barron Hilton feel about all this?

DR: Well, Barron Hilton was pretty upset as you can imagine, very concerned about this unmanned balloon heading for Dallas, Texas. But, he understands that particular thing won't happen again. We will go to great length to make sure. First of all the next balloon envelope that we have we are going to test it. Structural load test. We will change some things, minor things on the capsule. Nothing major. Will have fewer propane tanks and bigger. Instead of having 20 tanks we will only have a dozen tanks.

Money is not in the bank. But, I feel confident that Barron will continue with our project. If he doesn't then I will find somebody else. As far as I am concerned we are going to do this again. I am not going to quit on this thing. If I have to make the balloon out of tissue paper we are going to do it.