Tom Cruise Sets Out To Make First Movie In Space With NASA

Tom Cruise has announced his intention to create an action movie in space and create the first motion picture filmed outside of Earth’s bounds. Cruise has reached out to SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, to help him with this idea. SpaceX and previous partner NASA have discussed working in the project with Cruise. No movie studio has officially agreed to partner with Cruise to make the movie and the logistics are still being developed, but SpaceX and NASA seem to be interested. 

Jim Bridenstine, a NASA administrator confirmed this partnership with Cruise in a tweet on May 5. “NASA is excited to work with @TomCruise on a film aboard the @Space_Station! We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA’s ambitious plans a reality.” Musk then responded to this tweet by saying “should be a lot of fun!”

Should be a lot of fun!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2020

For the past eight years, SpaceX has been in the process of developing a way to send private citizens into space and has been receiving grants from NASA, which plans to grant private citizen access to the International Space Station. The International Space Station orbits around Earth and is used by several nations to house a science laboratory and astronaut crews. 

SpaceX plans to send veteran NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, to ride in a SpaceX ship called the Crew Dragon Capsule. The capsule will go into space on top of the Falcon 9-Rocket, which is 23-stories tall. This launch is set to take place on May 27 and will take Behnken and Hurley to the International Space Station. 

This all a part of the Commercial Crew Program, which was created by the U.S. government in 2010 in the effort to allow NASA to send people into space once again. Through working with NASA, SpaceX is working towards creating a new program, Starship, a way to launch people into space that is more efficient and a lot less expensive. Although Starship is still in the early stages of development, SpaceX hopes that this will allow people to go to the surface of the moon once again.