There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime's learning experience. For the best pilots, flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best. Experience is everything. The eagerness to learn how and why every piece of equipment works is everything. And luck is everything, too.

That to me is a bunch of crap trying to shoot guys up into damned space. What they're going to do is they're going to wipe out half a dozen people one of these days, and that will be the end of it.

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.

Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach - then tipped right off the scale ... We were flying supersonic. And it was a smooth as a baby's bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.

There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.

At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.