Frank Corvin, ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, Jerry O'Neill and ‘Tank’ Sullivan were hotdog members of Project Daedalus, the US Air Force's test program for space travel, but their hopes were dashed in 1958 with the formation of NASA and the use of trained chimps. They blackmail their way into orbit when Russia's mysterious ‘Ikon’ communications satellite's orbit begins to degrade and threatens to crash to Earth.

While the plot is overly cliched, the suberb acting by the stars (especially the tense interactions between Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones) and the spectacular special effects make this a movie worth seeing.