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The Right Stuff

In 1947, over the Muroc Army Air Field in California, a number of test pilots are killed while flying high-speed aircraft such as the rocket-powered Bell X-1. After another pilot, Slick Goodlin, demands $150,000 (equivalent to $2,163,000 in 2025) to attempt to break the sound barrier, war hero Captain Chuck Yeager receives the chance to fly the X-1. Yeager becomes the first person to fly at supersonic speed, defeating the "demon in the sky."

Six years later, Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base, still attracts the best test pilots. Yeager (now a major) and friendly rival Scott Crossfield repeatedly break each other's speed records. They often visit the Happy Bottom Riding Club run by Pancho Barnes, who classifies the pilots at Edwards as either "prime" (such as Yeager and Crossfield) that fly the best equipment or newer "pudknockers" who only dream about it. Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Donald "Deke" Slayton, captains of the United States Air Force, are among the "pudknockers" who hope to also prove that they have "the Right Stuff." The tests are no longer secret, as the military soon recognizes that it needs good publicity for funding. Cooper's wife, Trudy, 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 Soviet Sputnik satellite alarms the United States government. Politicians such as Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and military leaders demand that NASA help America defeat the Soviets 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 of the United States Marine Corps, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra and Scott Carpenter of the United States Navy, as well as Cooper, Grissom and Slayton; they immediately become national heroes. Although many early NASA rockets explode during launch, the ambitious astronauts all hope to be the first in space as part of Project Mercury. Although engineers see the men as passengers, the pilots insist for the Mercury spacecraft to have a window, a hatch with explosive bolts, and pitch-yaw-roll controls. However, the Soviet Union beats them into space on April 12, 1961, with the launch of Vostok 1 carrying Yuri Gagarin. The seven astronauts are determined to match and to surpass the Soviets.

Shepard is the first American to reach space on the 15-minute sub-orbital flight of Mercury-Redstone 3 on May 5. After Grissom's similar flight of Mercury-Redstone 4 on July 21, the capsule's hatch blows open and quickly fills with water. Grissom escapes, but the spacecraft, overweight with seawater, sinks. Many criticize Grissom for possibly panicking and opening the hatch prematurely. Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth on Mercury-Atlas 6 on February 20, 1962; he survives a possibly loose heat shield and receives a ticker-tape parade. He, his colleagues, and their families become celebrities, including a gigantic celebration in the Sam Houston Coliseum to announce the opening of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, despite the fear of Glenn's wife, Annie, of public speaking because of a stutter.

Although test pilots at Edwards mock the Mercury program for sending "spam in a can" into space, they recognize that they are no longer the fastest men on Earth, and Yeager states that "it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on national TV." While testing the new Lockheed NF-104A, Yeager attempts to set a new altitude record at the edge of space but is nearly killed in a high-speed ejection when his engine fails. Though seriously burned after reaching the ground, Yeager gathers up his parachute and walks to the ambulance, which proves his worth.

On May 15, 1963, Cooper has a successful launch on Mercury-Atlas 9, which ends the Mercury program. As the last American to fly into space alone, he "went higher, farther, and faster than any other American... for a brief moment, Gordo Cooper became the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen."