"The Right Stuff" Part 1 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Orange

There was a howling noise that sounded very ominous, but was merely the super-cold fuel being loaded in the fuel tank, in preparation for the upcoming flight.

Answer: Chuck Yeager

Chuck was first seen riding a horse near the X-1, looking at it critically. Not only was he the first man to break the sound barrier, but he did it with broken ribs that he had gotten in a horse riding accident the night before.

Answer: Bar owner

She actually was a qualified pilot, just not a test pilot. Some might have said that her saloon was a brothel. She was a very tough cookie, and took no lip from young pilots. Her bar, Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club, burnt down during the Mercury Program, supposedly from an errant flare. It was the bar where all the test pilots went to drink.

Answer: Yuri Gagarin

The scene began with someone running down a hallway to tell the news about Gagarin, but the administrators already knew. This scene was just like an earlier event, when Sputnik was launched, and President Eisenhower insisted on having test pilots as the first astronauts.

Answer: Tom Wolfe

The book was published in 1979, and the screenplay written in 1983 by the dirctor of the film, Philip Kaufman with input by William Goldman.
The book went into much greater, and grizzlier detail than was in the film. But then again that is almost always the case, isn't it?

Answer: Fred the bartender

He was the funky old guy who asked the two NASA recruiters if they wanted a drink of whiskey, then looked at them like they were crazy when one of them asked him for a coke...in a clean glass.

Answer: Beeman's

It was a matter of down-home pride. If he owed Ridley something, he intended to survive the flight to repay the debt.

Answer: Star Voyager

The question was asked of Gordo Cooper by Gus Grissom, while having a drink and listening to the bumbling NASA recruiters at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club. Gus liked the sound of "Star Voyager, Gus Grissom".

Answer: You're lookin' at him.

This was Gordo Cooper's inside joke with his wife. The question was actually asked of him by a reporter while at Johnson's Houston barbeque near the end of the movie. He started to talk about all the dead pilots from his test pilot days, but reverted back to the joke when they said they couldn't hear him.

He introduced the joke when he was moving his family to Edwards Air Force Base as a way to calm his wife down about his driving fast.

Answer: A "No handball playing here" sign.

John Glenn had hung it in the capsule to break the tension. Al Shepard was a voracious handball player. Shepard handed it back to Glenn and told him that it wasn't very funny, but he sure did appreciate it. This was to be Shepard's historic space shot, that got America caught up in the space race.