I am William Eldridge from the national air and space museum and would like to present an award to the famous Burt Rutan for his unusual but incredible airplane designs. He has broken all the rules to designing and building an aircraft. Let’s look at one of Rutan’s famous planes, the Voyager. This plane has two different sized propellers, a wingspan of around 350% of the fuselage, two sets of rudders and the elevator is at the front! Yet it is still one of if not the most successful plane designs in the history of aviation! 

 

The award I would like to present to the famous Burt Rutan is ‘Breaking the Rules in Aviation Design’. The rules of aviation design are as follows: A fuselage to support the parts on the plane, the wings (these should be around one-third to the front of the fuselage), and a tail which includes an elevator and rudder (these should go at the back of the plane). 

 

All these features are important for a plane to fly. But the award that I would like to present is for breaking these rules. Burt Rutan has come up with many special plane designs that do not include the specific features listed in the last paragraph. I have one more plane that I will list in the following paragraph. 

 

Let’s look at one of Rutan’s incredible designs. The Rutan Boomerang is one of the only non-symmetrical plane ever built. It has an incredible range, is energy efficient, and also very safe. After its pretty normal body shape, it only really has one main difference. On its left wing, is a second prop! (The first one is on the front.) The design was intended to be a multi-engine aircraft that in the event of failure of a single engine would not become dangerously difficult to control due to asymmetric thrust. 

 

To conclude my talk, I would like to thank Rutan for his incredible designs and I’m sure we’ll use them in our aviation future. Now I will present the award…