Six years later, Muroc, by then Edwards Air Force Base, remains a beehive of danger, competition, and risky behavior. Major Yeager and friendly rival Scott Crossfield repeatedly break each other's speed records. Crossfield gets featured on the newsreels for achieving Mach 2, while Yeager, unnamed, shakes his hand as the former record-holder. They often visit the Happy Bottom Riding Club run by pioneering aviatrix Pancho Barnes for raucous nights of drinking. Loud and vulgar, she favors the pilots at Edwards who fly the best equipment, such as Yeager and Crossfield, whom she dubs "prime", over green "pudknockers" who only dream about it. Newly arrived United States Air Force captains Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Donald "Deke" Slayton hope to prove that they have "the Right Stuff". Publicity has replaced secrecy to generate continued funding, adding further pressure to the pilots. Cooper's wife, Trudy, and other wives fear becoming widows as the ever more gripping competitions of man versus machine, man versus Nature, and man versus man grow, but cannot change their husbands' powerful ambitions and what they lead to. The stress and deprivations result in Trudy taking the kids and going to live with her parents.