Book Planned; Movie Hoped For : Voyager’s Crew on Edge of Marketing Whirlwind

MOJAVE —  For the first time in weeks, there was silence Wednesday in the Voyager hangar at Mojave Airport.

A day-old cake sat on a table, left over from celebrations after Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager’s successful round-the-world flight. A red tricycle, fitted with strips of cardboard cut in the shape of Voyager’s wings, sat on the floor--a whimsical present from the Voyager’s volunteer crew to the pilots.

But the stillness belies what may well become a marketing frenzy as businesses seek to capitalize on Voyager’s historic journey around the world without stopping or refueling.

In one office, project spokesman Peter Riva was busy fielding telephone calls requesting interviews with the pilots and personal appearances. Among the callers was the White House to make final arrangements for Monday, when President Reagan is to present the Presidential Citizens Medals to Rutan, Yeager and the plane’s designer, Burt Rutan, at a ceremony in Los Angeles.

Already there are invitations to travel to London, Paris, Tokyo and Milan, Italy. Riva estimated that the pair will be traveling “about four months” next year.

A book, as yet untitled, is to be written by the pilots, with New York-based freelance writer Phil Patton, for Alfred A. Knopf Inc. It is to be “ready in five to six months,” he said. “That is the first priority.”

An exuberant Riva, a New York literary agent who is the grandson of famed film star Marlene Dietrich, continued: “After that it’s probably going to be the movie.”

“I’d love to see somebody exciting play the parts. Maybe we’ll get Robert Redford” to portray Rutan, 48, he added. For the 34-year-old, short-haired Yeager, Riva added: “It has to be somebody who has spunk and character. I would have thought somebody like Sissy Spacek would be perfect. Take her hair and cut it.”

Riva was among only a handful of Voyager staffers to show up Wednesday--”to clean up and get out of here,” as technical assistant Gary Gunnell put it, and get home to their families for Christmas.

Yeager and Rutan stayed home in the one-story stucco house they share with several other Voyager team members. Yeager, in a white terry-cloth robe, told a visitor that they indeed were trying to sleep, “but the phone keeps ringing.” Later in the day, they dropped by the hangar.

Only a few volunteers were still there. Bob Callender, a Burbank resident who had worked on the engine mounts, bought sweat shirts in the Voyager souvenir shop “because I didn’t get out to do Christmas shopping.”

Dick Blosser, who had run the communications system for Voyager, put the motor generator he had loaned to the effort on a small trailer and headed home to Fullerton. Technician Fergus Fay of La Mirada packed up his tools in cardboard boxes.

On a nearby table were the contents of Voyager--still-full pouches of water cups, two blue sweat shirts, a stapler, Rutan’s slippers (held together with duct tape), used tissues, even fecal matter that were stored in plastic bags.

“We’ve saved everything,” Fay explained. Everything will be weighed in order to calculate the precise weight of the craft upon completion of the journey.

Under 24-Hour Guard

The plane itself was still at Edwards Air Force Base, where it landed, and was under 24-hour guard, Riva said, “so nobody can touch it.”

Within a couple of weeks, the plane will be returned to the hangar and go on display “for at least six months,” he said. Beyond that, arrangements are being made for it to go on permanent display in the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum in Washington.

He said he does not know if Rutan or Yeager will fly Voyager the 20-mile distance from Edwards to Mojave.

Riva said he is not sure if anything in the world would get them back into that craft.

When the plane returns, the fuel tanks will be drained so that the Voyager team will know exactly how much fuel was left at the end of the nine-day flight. Riva estimated Wednesday that “there was a heck of a lot less than people thought. . . . Only four gallons in the header tank and 10 gallons in one of the front canards.”

40 Miles Per Gallon

The plane used an average of about 40 miles per gallon, and so the craft might have been able to go another 560 miles, according to Riva.

Still, he described the final hours of Voyager’s flight as a “nail biter,” because getting access to the other 10 gallons would have taken the pilots “about a half-hour” of mechanical work.

Two of the fuel tanks were leaking slightly, Riva added, and he did not know the cause. “We have yet to evaluate that,” he said. “We’re not sure if it was a lightning strike or if it was damage done on takeoff.”