The Right Stuff (1983) is a film adaptation of 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 the Mercury program, America's first attempt at manned spaceflight. The story contrasts the "Mercury Seven" and their families with pilots like Chuck Yeager, who was considered by many test pilots to be the best of them all, but who was never selected as an astronaut. The Mercury Seven were Scott Carpenter, Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.

Tom Wolfe's book on the history of the U.S. Space program reads like a novel, and the film has that same fictional quality. It covers the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager to the Mercury 7 astronauts, showing that no one had a clue how to run a space program or how to select people to be in it. Thrilling, funny, charming and electrifying all at once. Written by John Vogel

A rousing, very entertaining adaptation of Tom Wolfe's bestseller about the first seven Mercury astronauts. We go behind the prepackaged, unblemished saints we knew through the media to find imperfect human beings who were actually even more heroic. The astronauts are heroes, no doubt about it. As space pioneer Chuck Yaeger (Sam Shepard) bitterly points out, these men all knew the risks they were taking as they rode their primitive capsules into space. They knew they were powered by rockets that could explode them into the tiniest of atoms. There were the fierce fires of re-entry that could reduce them to cinders, as well as the possibility of no re-entry, leaving them to perish miserably in their orbits. Yet these men eagerly took those risks. They were made of the right stuff. Written by alfiehitchie