A moment later, they are surprised to hear Yeager's calm voice crackle over the radio, 'Make a note here would you?' This Mach-meter must be busted. Suddenly, there is a strange boom, heard by the crew waiting on the ground, and everyone fears that the sound barrier has claimed another life. The plane begins to vibrate, then shake, with Yeager fighting the controls.

Yeager ignites the rocket engine and quickly zooms up into the sky, going faster and faster, closing in on the deadly Mach-1 mark. The little X-1 is carried aloft by a large B-29 bomber, then at the right altitude, is dropped free. Hiding his injury from the flight crew the next morning, Yeager climbs painfully into the plane and prepares to confront the sound barrier 'demon'.

After a few drinks, he and his wife go galloping off on their horses through the twilight, but a tree branch catches Yeager across the chest, knocking him off the horse and cracking a few ribs. Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), a young wartime ace with a wild reputation, volunteers to fly the X-1, and spends the night before his flight at the local bar. Some thought of the sound barrier as a 'demon that lived in the sky', waiting to destroy any who dared confront it. The only problem was that others had tried before, and not all had survived. Their goal was to break the sound barrier by using a small rocket-powered test plane called the X-1. In 1947, a group of determined men gathered at a remote Air Force base in the high desert of California. The motivations of the individuals comprising the pilots, the astronauts and the wives are also shown. In all these situations, the support from the women behind the men is demonstrated, they who have the continual fact of one in four not making it back from a flight in the front of their minds. Regardless, many pilots apply for the seven positions within the first American space program - Mercury - the seven chosen who do whatever they can to make flying expertise an important aspect of the job. However, many within the space program and many pilots downgrade the importance of 'man behind the wheel' in getting into space. But with what is happening in the Soviet Union will accelerate the American space program, which will largely usurp the political and public consciousness on those aeronautic feats. One of those initial targets is to break the sound barrier - Mach 1 - with pilots in the newly commissioned US Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California primarily those attempting the feat, many who will die in the process. The men that are going to achieve these feats are the ones with the 'right stuff'.

Within the military, this attitude applies largely to flight, where there is a continual race not only to fly faster and higher, but do it first and especially before the Soviets. The post-WWII period in the US is a time of grandeur and hope, wanting to do things bigger and better than had ever been done before.

The right stuff tom wolf