In 1958 four test pilots (Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner) were about to become the first men in space. But internal problems prevented that from happening and they were all discharged. Four decades later the group are re-formed when an old Russian satellite suffers system failure, the results of which could be catastrophic if not sorted out soon. The only system that can stop the satellite from causing mass destruction is the old navigation system designed by Eastwood and his team. So the ageing team are sent into space in the shuttle on a mission to fix the satellite.