The Right Stuff Pics

The film begins in 1947 at Muroc Army Air Field, an arid California military base where test pilots often die flying high-speed aircraft such as the rocket-powered Bell X-1. After another pilot demands $150,000 to attempt to break the sound barrier, war hero Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) receives the chance to fly the X-1. While on a horseback ride with his wife Glennis (Barbara Hershey), Yeager collides with a tree branch and breaks his ribs, which inhibits him from leaning over and locking the door to the X-1. Worried that his injury might become known, Yeager confides in friend and fellow pilot Jack Ridley (Levon Helm). Ridley cuts off part of a broomstick and tells Yeager to use it as a lever to help seal the hatch to the X-1, and Yeager becomes the first man to fly at supersonic speed, defeating the "demon in the sky".

In 1953 Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base, still attracts the best test pilots. Yeager and friendly rival Scott Crossfield (Scott Wilson) repeatedly break the other's speed records. The "prime" pilots often visit the Happy Bottom Riding Club run by Pancho Barnes (Kim Stanley), where Gordon "Gordo" Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Virgil "Gus" Grissom (Fred Ward) of the United States Air Force are among the newer "pudknockers" that hope to also prove that they have "the Right Stuff".^[2] The tests are no longer secret, as the military recognizes that it needs good publicity for funding, and with "no bucks, no Buck Rogers". Cooper's wife, Trudy (Pamela Reed), and other wives are afraid of becoming widows, but cannot change their husbands' ambitions and desire for success and fame.

In 1957, the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite alarms the United States government. Politicians such as Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and military leaders demand that NASA help America defeat the Russians in the new Space Race. The search for the first Americans in space excludes Yeager, because he lacks a college degree. Grueling physical and mental tests select the Mercury Seven astronauts, including John Glenn (Ed Harris) of the United States Marine Corps, Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn) of the United States Navy, Cooper, Grissom, and three others; they immediately become national heroes. Although many early NASA rockets explo

The Right Stuff is a 1983 American film adapted from Tom Wolfe's 1979 book The Right Stuff about the test pilots who were involved in high-speed aeronautical research at Edwards Air Force Base as well as those selected to be astronauts for Project Mercury, the United States' first attempt at manned spaceflight.