When SpaceShip One rocketed into suborbital space and safely touched down on a Mojave desert airstrip last October 4, it met all the criteria to snag the coveted $10 million X Prize for its creator, Burt Rutan. Intrigued by this eccentric genius and his technological achievements, people all over the world clamored to find out more about Rutan and what he would do next.
Above the Fray. Brian P. Lawler gets a great vantage point for the landing of SpaceShip One atop his Mercedes. Photo: Mike Klesius, National Geographic magazine
Which is why California photographers Jim Sugar and Brian Lawler are sitting on such hot property. Sugar, a freelance photographer with extensive experience shooting for National Geographic, and Lawler, a photographer and graphic communications teacher at California Polytechnic State University, have been collaborating on a one-hour documentary on Rutan that they hope will air on network or cable TV very soon.
Rutan’s Next Big Thing
Several years ago, Rutan gave Lawler and Sugar the go-ahead to shoot video of him and his staff at his Mojave, California, company, Scaled Composites, as they worked to develop some of the most innovative and unusual aircraft in the world. Rutan gave them unlimited behind-the-scenes access to what will be his next big project: the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. “We have the entire history of that airplane from the moment it was in Burt Rutan’s computer,” says Sugar.
In early 2005, adventurer Steve Fossett will take Global Flyer into the stratosphere and attempt to fly solo around the world on a single tank of gas. Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson, who is sponsoring the upcoming mission, believes this flight will become the next great aviation record — an achievement comparable to Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic flight. But it won’t be easy: Lindbergh started hallucinating after staying awake for 30 hours straight. Fossett will be aloft for 80 — not to mention his one-tank-of-gas limit restricting him from landing and refueling.
“We have the entire history of [the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer] from the moment it was in Burt Rutan’s computer.”
“The Story Is the Guy”
Even though Sugar and Lawler show and tell the creation of Global Flyer from conception to flight, both men stress that the real story is about Rutan. “What we’ve done over the last three years is to photograph Global Flyer as a sort of a theme that runs underneath our story about Burt,” says Lawler. “The airplane is merely the spine or the structure. The story is the guy,” adds Sugar.
It just happens to be a guy Sugar knows rather well. Sugar has been shooting still images of Rutan and his aircraft for more than 20 years. “When you walk into Scaled Composites, you’ll see literally hundreds of magazine covers and still photos framed on the walls,” says Lawler. “About 60 percent of it is stuff that Jim shot, and now there are a couple of photos that I’ve shot.”
Air-to-Air Contact. What’s it like to shoot video out the back door of a chase plane going a couple hundred miles an hour? “It’s fun but also extraordinarily dangerous,” says Lawler. Watch the QuickTime movie of Global Flyer soaring over the California mountains. Photo: Jim Sugar and Brian P. Lawler
Sugar and Rutan first met when National Geographic assigned the photographer a story called “Aviation Advances.” “When I got the assignment, I went out there knowing very little,” Sugar says. “I was a pilot and knew of him by reputation but not much more. I got there the day after the first flight of his second airplane. Burt was a very young man at that point and he was just getting started. We became fast friends. He’s also the smartest guy I’ve ever met.”
About four years ago, Rutan asked Sugar to start shooting video of the planes to complement the still images he’d been taking. “They can learn a lot by seeing their aircraft in flight,” say Sugar. “He wanted video as good as the stills.”
Next page: From Conception to Flight
