The Right Stuff Quotes
"The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process."
"A career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep."
"To have a bunch of young fighter pilots up in the air thinking this way used to drive flight controllers crazy."
"But as everyone knew—and, again, it was never explained in so many words—only those who were assigned to fighter squadrons, the 'fighter jocks,' as they called each other with a self-satisfied irony, remained in the true fraternity."
"Gentlemen, we're having this little problem with chronic violent death…"
"How can all of them down there, those poor souls who will soon be waking up and trudging out of their minute rectangles and inching along their little noodle highways toward whatever slots and grooves make up their everyday lives—how could they live like that, with such earnestness, if they had the faintest idea of what it was like up here in this righteous zone?"
"To take off in an F-100 at dawn and cut in the afterburner and hurtle twenty-five thousand feet up into the sky so suddenly that you felt not like a bird but like a trajectory, yet with full control, full control of five tons of thrust, all of which flowed from your will and through your fingertips."
"The entire world below… left behind. Only at this point can one begin to understand just how big, how titanic, the ego of the military pilot could be."
"To talk about it in so many words was forbidden, of course. The very words death, danger, bravery, fear were not to be uttered except in the occasional specific instance or for ironic effect."
"Every young fighter jock knew the feeling of getting two or three hours' sleep and then waking up at 5:30 a.m. and having a few cups of coffee, a few cigarettes, and then carting his poor quivering liver out to the field for another day of flying."
"The only trouble they had with Yeager was in holding him back."
"Yeager didn't believe the 'barrier' existed."
"Yeager and his wife set off on a little proficiency run at full gallop through the desert in the moonlight."
"The doctor in Rosamond informs him he has two broken ribs."
"Yeager had to keep his right arm pinned down to his side to keep his ribs from hurting so much."
"The X-1 started steaming and screaming like a teakettle."
"The sky turned a deep purple and all at once the stars and the moon came out—and the sun shone at the same time."
"His was a king's solitude, unique and inviolate, above the dome of the world."
"Yeager and Ridley roared and the old weatherbeaten bar boomed."
"It seemed that there was a test of lung capacity... Scott forced himself to hold his breath... and held the column of mercury up for 171 seconds, almost doubling the record."
"One thing Scott had going for him was his superb physical condition, although at the outset he would have never believed that sheer physical condition could be of any vital importance."
"It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can. If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way."
"I consider myself religious. I am a Protestant and belong to the Church of Christ. I am not real active in church... but I consider myself a good Christian still."
"One night Scott called, and Rene could tell that he was exceptionally pleased over how things were going."
"I don't think any of us could really go on with something like this if we didn't have pretty good backing at home, really."
"The astronauts are fully aware of their responsibilities to the project and the American public, particularly with regard to the heroic role they are beginning to assume with the young people of the country."
"The astronaut has been added to the system as a redundant component."
"The only sure-fire training technique was operant conditioning."
"A minor architectural note, one might say—and yet in Cocoa Beach, this one fact did more than the pill to encourage what would later be rather primly named 'the sexual revolution.'"
"Traditions often began on a moment's notice in the military; but they took a long time to die."
"If the automatic system broke down, he might step in as a repairman or manual conductor."
"The glorification of the astronauts had really gotten out of control!"
"In the world of science—and Project Mercury was supposed to be a scientific enterprise—pure scientists ranked first and engineers ranked second and the test subjects of experiments ranked so low that one seldom thought about them."
"The only way to maneuver out of a rocket-plane tumble was to take your hands off the controls and put the mother in the lap of a supernatural power."
"It wasn't merely that the Mercury plan of a man in a pod splashing down in the middle of the ocean under a parachute was 'dirty,' primitive, and an embarrassing way for a pilot to come down, as the Edwards pilots saw it. It was also needlessly dangerous."
"All right, I'm cooler than you are. Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle."
"The capsule was rocking around a little, but there weren't any loose items in the capsule."
"I had the cap off and the safety pin out, but I don't think that I hit the button."
"I was lying there, flat on my back—and it just blew."
"The only thing they liked about his entire performance was the way he said, 'I was lying there—and it just blew,' and the way he stuck to it."
"But Johnson is sitting out there a few blocks away in his limousine, fuming and swearing."
"I will back you up all the way, one hundred percent, and you tell them that."
"I don't want Johnson or any of the rest of them to put so much as one toe inside our house!"
"The astronauts were not his men. They were in a category new to American life. They were single-combat warriors."
"Here comes the showdown… the seven Mercury astronauts on the TV… explaining that in the very moments when their lives are on the line, he, Webb, is meddling, trying to curry favor with Lyndon Johnson."
"Look at this office," he said, "And I… cannot… get… a… simple… order… carried out!"
"All the same, I love those guys. They're putting their lives on the line for their country."
"The main thing was not to involve people who became 'panicky' when everything didn't go just right."
"If he closed his eyes it felt as if he were lying on his back on the deck of an old ship."
"The enormous rocket seemed curiously fragile, the way it moved and creaked and whined."
"They were having a terrific time. A month in a Banana River trailer camp was not too long to wait."
"They looked very small and far way and far below. And they were all wondering with a delicious shudder what it must be like to be in his place now."
"Did any yogi ever control his heartbeat and perspiration better!"
"He knew every sensation he would feel once the event began."
"The sky was very black now… The g-forces began pushing him back into his seat again."
"He had to radio back every sight, every sensation, and otherwise give the taxpayers the juicy stuff they wanted to hear."
"The sensation of speed was no more than that of being in an airliner and watching a cloud bank slide by far below."
"Weightless he was, in the vacuum of space, humming around the earth… but his center of gravity was still back in that Baptist hardtack Low Rent stretch of sand and palmetto grass in Florida."
"Now he was over the middle of the Pacific, about halfway between Australia and Mexico, when the sun began to come up behind him."
"This is Friendship 7. I'll try to describe what I'm in here. I am in a big mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they're luminescent."
"Never fly under a sea gull—they'll shit on your airplane."
"Down there's the Himalayas. Ay-yuh… the Himalayas."
"Well… things are beginning to stack up a little."
"I, for one, don't want to go to bed by the light of a Communist moon."
"That sonofabitch will never fly for me again."
"Few of the lads had ever been in combat and they knew little about the critical tolerances of fighter aircraft during violent maneuvers."
"These days the way to the top—meaning the road to test-pilot astronaut—involved being very good at a lot of things without necessarily being 'shit-hot,' at anything."
"It was as if his hesitations were just data punch-in intervals for his computer."
"The truth was that there you had a picture of the pilot in practically all the hypersonic vehicles of the future, whether in space or in the atmosphere."
"The supersonic transports and airliners would be so automated they would give the pilot an override stick just so he could push on it every now and then and feel like a pilot."
"The only reason a pilot will be needed is to take over and decide what to do if anything goes wrong with the electronic equipment."
"On the great pyramid there was no steady state."
"The unspoken premise was that you either had the right stuff or you didn't, and no other variables mattered."
"It was impossible to recall the emotion of those days."
"The Cold War, as anyone could plainly see, was over."
"The single-combat warriors' war had been removed."