Tom Cruise Is Making a Movie in Space, Which Seems Like an, Uh, Impossible Mission

From Popular Mechanics

• Rumors have been confirmed by NASA that Tom Cruise will make a movie in space.

• Cruise has filmed wild stunts everywhere from the Burj Khalifa to the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

• Any film crew squeezing aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will need to be very small.

Deadline reports that Tom Cruise is in talks with SpaceX and NASA to film a movie in space. If anybody can do this, it’s Cruise, he of the death-defying stunts—climbing the tallest building on Earth, hanging from a real plane as it takes off, performing a halo jump from 25,000 feet in the air—that make the Mission: Impossible movies so great.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine’s confirmation of a movie filmed at the International Space Station (ISS) with Cruise sure seems official. (While Bridenstine is a 20-year Air Force veteran, first in active duty and since 2010 in the reserves, he isn’t a scientist. He did, at least, publicly reverse his previous climate change denial in 2018.)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, meanwhile, is also looking forward to the endeavor:

Still, skeptics abound. Mel’s Miles Klee wrote a blow-by-blow takedown of the entire idea, including an exciting wager: "I’m so confident we’ll never see this space movie as described that I vow, if it gets made (but it won’t), to publicly declare it my favorite film of all time, and advocate for recognition from every award committee."

We hope like hell Cruise indeed makes it to the ISS, but in the meantime, we need to address two important questions: Can you actually film a movie in space? And, more importantly, should you?

ISS crew members already use a variety of cameras every day, including some that are installed into the station itself and some that ride along in devices like iPads. “To ensure they capture a great shot, astronauts always keep eight cameras at the ready in the cupola of the space station, so someone can grab a camera and snap a picture when needed,” space testing firm NTS explains.

Inside the ISS, air pressure is kept in line with human health requirements, which is consistent with how our consumer goods are designed and tested. If the human who carries and uses the iPad can’t survive at the bottom of the ocean or in space, an iPad doesn’t really need to be able to operate there. Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov’s camera exposure dial was broken by g-forces during liftoff in the early days of manned spaceflight.

Deadline goes into detail about the extremely dangerous stunts Cruise has perfected in the last couple of decades, but the idea of filming a “narrative feature film” in the station has different kinds of dangers. SpaceX’s involvement is likely in carrying Cruise into space, meaning he’ll go through a launch with the same amount of danger that astronauts face every time they take off.

And there’s a grim pragmatism to this decision: If a corporation is responsible for launching civilians for this project, the corporation assumes public responsibility for the risk factors.

Will there be other actors? The ISS has a regular crew of six people only, and its resources are all tuned carefully to meet the needs of a group just that size. The world record for most people in space at a time is just 13, and that record has stood since 2009. Major blockbuster movies can have thousands of people on their crews, and film researcher Stephen Follows reported a few years ago that “the top films of the past two decades have each had 3.5 writers, 7 producers, 55 people in the art department, 32 in sound, 55 in camera / electrical and 156 in visual effects.”

Even Paranormal Activity, a rare low-budget independent movie that became a blockbuster, credits a cast of nine and a crew of a couple dozen more. A movie made in space and starring one of the biggest stars in the world seems like a budget no-brainer, but this isn’t financial—it’s logistical.

Can Hollywood swing a persuasive action adventure movie with almost no crew and almost no actors? Plenty of movies, including successful space movies like Gravity, have very few characters, or even just one. But filming still involves lighting, microphones, cameras, the director, and usually many other people in important jobs. Hell, the different industry unions might have requirements that need to change for space.

Cameras might be fine, but many parts of film preparation won’t work on the ISS. All the makeup will need to be carefully applied liquids or creams that don’t shed waste into the air. Astronauts use water sprayers during their daily life, but traditional aerosols, like in spray makeup or hair products, probably can’t be used on ISS.

And while Cruise may be the most well-preserved 57-year-old man in history, even for him, appearing in less cinematic lighting with less hair and makeup prep could be the most dangerous stunt.

But there’s a bigger question here. Why does NASA want to have civilian actors and filmmakers on the ISS at all? Well, Bridenstine’s tweet explains the short version: “We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make [NASA’s] ambitious plans a reality.”

Indeed, Col. Chris Hadfield captured the world’s imagination when he lived on the ISS and dispatched well-made videos of everyday tasks the way astronauts do them. (And his popular, moving cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”)

This isn’t NASA’s first Hollywood rodeo—it isn’t even the agency's first time this decade. For the 2015 film The Martian, NASA consulted and even helped boost the film because of its clear pro-NASA, pro-space travel message during a time when funding and public interest aren’t always clear.

Right now, NASA is souping up for Artemis missions to the moon and has its eyes on Mars in the not-too-distant future. The same way The Martian represented a valuable public mission, a movie filmed aboard the ISS is a way to present life in space in, well, the best light.

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