CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The first man to fly faster than the speed of sound has given speedy approval of a move featuring him and other aeronautical pioneers.
Chuck Yeager, a native of Lincoln County, W.Va. and a retired major general, gave thumbs-up on the soon-to-be-released movie, 'The Right Stuff.'
'I just saw it in San Francisco,' the former test pilot said. 'It's a really nice film.'
The movie, based upon the best-seller by Tom Wolfe, deals with the personalities of the hot rocket aircraft test pilots and original U.S.astronauts of the Mercury program.
It portrays Yeager in a positive light for his daring exploits aboard experimental rocket aircraft, but is not as kind to some astronauts.
'It's obvious that Wolfe had a lot more affection for me than he did the astronauts,' said Yeager, 60, who was back in West Virginia for a reunion of his old flying outfit.
Yeager said he doesn't regret not becoming an astronaut.
'I could care less about sitting in a capsule,' said Yeager, who has referred to the early space flights as 'spam in a can' missions.
'Now, the space shuttle would've been fun.'
A piloted, re-usable system such as the shuttle should have been developed first, Yeager maintained, rather than the one-shot, rocket-riding space capsules.
'We could have been flying a shuttle 15 years ago with the X-20 Dinosaur,' the West Virginian said.
Will the added fame he's sure to acquire from the movie spoil Chuck Yeager?
'I'm already in the history books,' he reasons. 'The rest of it - the publicity and so on -- I don't want it.
'It's never bothered me, never will.'
