Chuck Yeager: It’s not a matter of thinking it’s possible. It’s duty. It’s just like flying combat. You know when you go on a combat mission, somebody is going to get killed. You just hope it isn’t you; if it is, that’s the way it goes. The same way with flying the X-1. It didn’t make any difference to me whether I thought the airplane would go faster than sound. I was assigned as a test pilot on it, and it was my duty to fly it. That’s the way most military pilots look at it.