The answer is swiftly and amusingly illustrated when his aides cannot find the plug socket to get the meeting-room projector working. "How the hell did they ever get ahead of us?" Johnson bellows. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, President Dwight D Eisenhower (Robert Beer) and Senator Lyndon B Johnson (Donald Moffat) are upset that the Soviets have gone and launched Sputnik-1 into outer space before they got their act together. He last broke the sound barrier in 2012, aged 89, in an F-15. Yeager appears to have sprung straight from the Big Book of American Heroes – strong jaw, cowboy hat, horse sense, stoic manner – but he really was like this, and doubtless still is. He breaks two ribs, but pretends to be fine so they won't take him off the mission – and then successfully pilots the Bell X-1, becoming the first man to go faster than the speed of sound. Then he falls off his horse while riding it around the desert in a daring competition with his firecracker wife Glennis (Barbara Hershey). "If you ask me, I think the damn thing doesn't exist," he says gruffly. Philip Kaufman's epic yet gripping film begins with test pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) going for a drink in a local bar, and casually signing up to break the sound barrier.
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