Yeager: ‘The Right Stuff’ but the Wrong Scoop

Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager’s name will be on the report of the presidential commission investigating the Challenger space shuttle tragedy, commission Chairman William P. Rogers said Thursday.

Two days after the retired general confirmed to a reporter that his name would not be on the report, his wife indicated that, although the hero of “The Right Stuff” gets quickly to the point, he is sometimes purposely off the point.

“He’s even told people: ‘Yes, I’ve resigned,’ ” Glennis Yeager told UPI. “Why not? Shut ‘em up. Let ‘em think his name’s been dropped. It makes no difference to him because it isn’t true.”

Mrs. Yeager made her comments in elaborating on a five-word interview between her husband and a Times reporter.

Commission Source

Yeager had been reached to check a tip by a commission source that Rogers had dropped his name from the panel’s final report because the famed test pilot had not given the commission enough of the “right stuff” during its 3 1/2-month investigation of the Jan. 28 shuttle accident.

When asked if he had been told that his name had been dropped, Yeager replied: “Yep.”

Then, asked whether the action bothered him, he declared: “Nope.”

And, asked whether his absence from all but one of the commission meetings had been due to his busy schedule, Yeager said: “You got it.”

“The Right Stuff” is the title of a book and a subsequent movie extolling test pilots and astronauts.