Stewart Kissel wrote in message ...
http://www.scaled.com/projects/globalflyer.html

Well if anyone out there in ras world is a buddy of
Rutan...I suspect he might make some terrific sailplanes
if he set his mind to it. For some reason I suspect
the very limited market would not be of much interest
to him

Actually, Rutan's track record for sailplanes is pretty bad - his
Solitaire self-launch glider won the SSA/SHA (?) contest, but turned
out to be a lousy sailplane due to it's canard configuration -
couldn't thermal slow enough (a simplification of the problem with
using canards at high Cls).

Butt-ugly, too; makes a PW-5 look beautiful in comparison!

I must be the only guy who thinks Rutan's designs are ugly and
over-optimized. But they do work exceptionally well at their design
missions, and one cannot argue with success!

Kirk