Sam Shepard credited as playing...
Chuck Yeager
- [repeated lines]
- Chuck Yeager: Hey, Ridley, ya got any Beeman's?
- Jack Ridley: Yeah, I think I got me a stick.
- Chuck Yeager: Loan me some, will ya? I'll pay ya back later.
- Jack Ridley: Fair enough.
- Jack Ridley: [talking to TV] Attaboy, Gus!
- [talking to Yeager]
- Jack Ridley: Pull that stuff on flight test, it's all over for him. I say he screwed the pooch, pardner. Plain and simple.
- Chuck Yeager: Yeah, well, sometimes you get a pooch that can't be screwed, ya know?
- Liaison Man: [chuckling] Exactly! Right now the President's got his own problems with the Bay of Pigs, he doesn't want the astronauts' image tarnished. Nothing these guys do is gonna be called a failure. You'd think the public would know they're just doing what monkeys have done.
- Chuck Yeager: Monkeys? You think a monkey knows he's sittin' on a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys, they know that, see? I'll tell you somethin'. Takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on TV. Ol' Gus, he did alright.
- Chuck Yeager: I'm a fearless man, but I'm scared to death of you.
- Glennis Yeager: Oh no you're not. But you oughta be.
- Chuck Yeager: Monkeys? You think a monkey knows he's sittin' on top of a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys they know that, see? Well, I'll tell you something, it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one that's on TV. Ol' Gus, he did all right.
- Chuck Yeager: Hey, Ridley, make another note here, would ya? Must be something wrong with this ol' Mach meter. Jumped plumb off the scale. Gone kinda screwy on me.
- Jack Ridley: You go ahead and bust it, we'll fix it. Personally, I think you're seein' things.
- Chuck Yeager: Yeah, could be. But I'm still goin' upstairs like a bat outta hell.
- [about Yeager's bruised ribs]
- Jack Ridley: How bad did you ding 'em?
- Chuck Yeager: Well, you might say as I broke a couple of the sons-o'-bitches.
- Chuck Yeager: [NASA recruiters are talking to test pilots] You need lab rabbits.
- Recruiter: Sorry, I didn't get that.
- Chuck Yeager: I said you need lab rabbits to curl up in your damn capsule. With its heart going "pitter-patter". And a wire up the kazook. I don't hold with it.
- Scott Crossfield: I don't either. You want a pilot to become a balistic missile. And then splash down - possibly get lost at sea.
- Pancho Barnes: See, some peckerwood's gotta get the thing up. And some peckerwood's gotta land the son of a bitch. And that "peckerwood" is called a "pilot".
- Jack Ridley: [showing Life Magazine cover with astronaut chimp] Here he is, Captain Ham!
- [pilots all laugh]
- Jack Ridley: Grinnin' like a possum eatin' a sweet potato.
- Chuck Yeager: Heh heh.heh heh. Look at the teeth!
- Jack Ridley: Does he look like the kinda guy who'd put doo doo in the capsule?