Tom Cruise and writer/director Doug Liman have reportedly booked tickets on a SpaceX Falcon rocket trip to the International Space Station to make a movie, according to @SpaceAlmanac on Twitter…next year!
Is October 2021 too soon, considering that we just got Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley back from the ISS? Is any other actor, or civilian for that matter, a better choice than Tom Cruise — an accomplished pilot who does most of his own stunts?
Scott Ott gets reaction to the news from Bill Whittle, creator of the four-part series ‘Apollo 11: What We Saw‘, who’s also a private pilot and lives at the doorstep of Hollywood.
Background Resource:
Tom Cruise’s Journey to Space for His Movie is Getting Real
[CinemaBlend.com, September 23, 2020]
So its confirmed that @CommanderMLA is flying the @Axiom_Space @SpaceX #CrewDragon tourist mission with Director @DougLiman & Tom Cruise. One seat still to be filled. They are to launch in October, 2021. pic.twitter.com/dn6SLvCOGz
— Space Shuttle Almanac (@ShuttleAlmanac) September 19, 2020
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Bill Whittle Network · Tom Cruise Books Seats on Elon Musk Rocket to Make Space Movie…Next Year!
12 replies on “Tom Cruise Books Seats on Elon Musk Rocket to Make Space Movie…Next Year!”
This dug up the memory of my closest encounter with a space mission.[spoiler title=”Spoiler Alert”]It ain’t all that close. Still pretty cool, though.[/spoiler]
Some time in the mid- to late-80s, I think, there was an experiment launched from Virginia, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport IIRC. The experiment consisted of two nighttime launches sent up quite close together in time, each to release a different gas into space to test some or other effect which I don’t remember. The first explosion created a dull purple cloud that took up about half of the entire sky. (News reports had said the clouds would be about twice the size of the moon. They were off a bit.) The second explosion created a similar cloud of bright green. Each cloud faded away over about 10 minutes.
What was remarkable to me (other than the color clouds) was that from my vantage point I watched the rocket plumes as they rose into the sky, right up to the point where they got too thin to see. (The explosions came a few seconds after the plumes disappeared, much higher in the sky.) And what was remarkable about watching the plumes is that I was watching with the naked eye from an empty, dark parking lot that was just outside of … Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Very interesting show!!
Wow, I didn’t know that “Roger that” was a “Top Gun” thing … It’s a military comms thing, at least as far as I’m aware. We also say that all the time in ham radio operations, many of which operators are military or former military. I was saying “Roger that” in the Marine Corps long, long before the Top Gun movie was released. It’s not a wannabe thing, it’s a procedural thing. It means “Yes” without sending a sibilant “esssssss” over a comm link.
I’m afraid that if I ever fly in an aircraft with Bill as the pilot and he asks me anything where “Roger that” is an applicable response … He’s just going to have to forgive me because that response is very nearly automatic I’m not vicariously living out a Tom Cruz character, I’m just replying out of habit, which is what good training always becomes. If you ever see me write out a date it will look like this —
24 Sept. 2020
Because that’s the way it’s done in the military and I just never broke the habit to write it as 9/24/2020 instead. In fact, I have to stop and think about writing it that way because I’m never sure if the day or the month come first. Which is why the military does dates that way …
Sorry for ranting about a Bill peeve but he’s making an assumption that isn’t ubiquitously accurate and I would be offended if someone thought that me saying “Roger that” was me trying to be a Top Gun wannabe.
All of that said, one of my two boys was convinced by the movie Top Gun that he wanted to be a Naval Aviator. A goal he subsequently accomplished and is now, though he still maintains his flight status, the XO (Second in command) of a stateside U.S. Navy base. While there can be no doubt that he was profoundly influenced by that movie, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t care for it if Bill labelled him a Top Gun wannabe for saying “Roger that” … Either.
I wonder how much of the day/month vs month/day convention is military vs whyever the europeans write it that way. I’ve read enough written by people across the pond and sometimes it mixes me up until I realize/remember where they are from. The dates later in the month are much easier to figure out because we don’t have 14 months, and 14/2/2015 is more obviously Valentines day than 7/9/2020 is Labor Day (though they wouldn’t be celebrating that).
I got in the habit of writing dates in the form “25 Sep 2020” because of my experience as a genealogical researcher. I have seen too many dates misinterpreted because they were written with numbers only and slashes.
I think that putting the day number first comes from it being a reduction of “the 25th of September 2020.” Over there you will sometimes hear someone say, “the 25th of the 9th, 2020.” Even on this side of the pond, we don’t say “September 25th, 2020.” We write it that way, but you will rarely hear anyone say it that way with the year unless they are reading it aloud.
I also think that saying “the 25th of September” rather than “September 25th” itself evolved from reporting of dates in newspapers and correspondence in the 19th century (and before) as “the 25th inst.” (instant, meaning “this month”), “ult.” (ultimo, “last month”), or “prox.” (proximo, “next month”). I suspect we dropped this usage on this side of the pond sooner than over there, preferring to specify the month for clarity, which then evolved to “September the 25th,” then “September 25th,” and then 9/25. We still don’t say aloud “on Nine Twenty-Five” unless it is a specific nomenclature like 9/11.
It might be more common now for people to say “September 25th” rather than “September the 25th,” but I think that’s because we are so used to seeing it written 9/25.
No doubt all of that’s why the military does it that way. I wasn’t saying that using that date format is the sole province of the military, I was saying that I learned to use that date format in the military and continue to use it because of both long habit and the inherent clarity and precision it lends. Which is also why I am heard to say things like “as you were”, “your other left”, “I copy____”, “wait one”, “whiskey tango foxtrot, over”, “sitrep”, “squared away”, “survey”(meaning to dispose of), “unsat”, “stand the f*** by”, “bulkhead”, “hatch”, “head” (for toilet) … etc.
It’s like living in the south, the environment often has a permanent effect to varying degrees on one’s speech patterns.
This is also why the military uses a 24 hour clock and zulu time, neither of which are likewise exclusively military. These measures are intended to enhance clarity. It would be very bad to have a ship arrive on station in the wrong month or a ground assault commence at 5 PM when it needed to launch at 5 AM … etc.
That wasn’t really my point though. My point was cross-pollination of culture and language between movies, the military, military movies, civilian life, and Bill indicating he thought people who use the phrase “Roger that” were Top Gun fans trying to emulate Maverick from a seat in Bills putt-putt. Now if they were saying “10-4, Good Buddy” Bill might have reason to believe someone was putting on airs. 🙂
I don’t think Kirk ever actually kissed Julie Newmar(?). It was one of the Catwomen. Or was it Batgirl?
Jeff Hunter did kiss Oliver, though.
She sure was beautiful. I read that she had the flu during filming and soldiered through
It seems like just yesterday that Tom Cruise was a “U-Boat commander”.
“time of ya’ life, huh, kid?”
Love that movie…
OK. There’s a $5 fine for quoting “Top Gun”. What’s the fine for quoting “The Final Countdown”?
-Hey, Fox, that woke ’em up!
-Yeah. But I think the need another shot.
Next year we’re gonna party like it’s 1966!!