Space Cowboys

Space Cowboys is a 2000 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood. It stars Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner as four aging former test pilots who are sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite. It was theatrically released on August 4, 2000, received positive reviews from critics, and was a box-office success.

Plot

In 1958, two U.S. Air Force pilots and aspiring astronauts William "Hawk" Hawkins and Frank Corvin are testing a modified Bell X-2 when Hawk decides to break speed and altitude records. The plane stalls and they are forced to eject, narrowly missing a Boeing B-50 Superfortress flying with navigator "Tank" Sullivan. On the ground, Frank punches Hawk, but their fight is broken up by flight engineer Jerry O'Neill. Their boss, Bob Gerson, chastises Hawk before taking them to a press conference, where he announces that the newly created NASA, rather than the USAF, will be conducting space flight tests.

In the present day, NASA is tasked with preventing a Soviet communications satellite, IKON, from decaying out of orbit and crashing to Earth because of the uplink loss. The satellite's archaic electronics are based on those of Skylab that Frank had developed. Bob, now a project manager at NASA, requests Frank's help. Frank still despises Bob, but agrees provided he has the help of "Team Daedalus" including Hawk, Tank, and Jerry. Bob plans to have younger astronauts shadow the four, so as to replace them before launch. When the press learn of Frank's team, the Vice President convinces Bob that they must be part of the mission for publicity. The old and young teams soon work together, with the older astronauts showing off skills learned without the aid of onboard computers.