Of Course Tom Cruise Trained Secretly With NASA To Go To Space
Why wouldn't he? He's Tom bloody Cruise.
Universal PicturesNot even the sky is the limit for Tom Cruise. The star takes being a Hollywood icon to the extreme, with stories of his inhuman charisma, personal challenges and goals occasionally leaking out from beneath the Scientology shroud of secrecy.
Now it turns out - probably to the surprise of absolutely nobody - that Cruise once secretly trained with NASA to go into space on an actual shuttle mission.
According to the Mail, he wanted to join the crew of the US Space Shuttle Columbia, which crashed killing all 7 astronauts on board in 2003. Apparently, Cruise was secretly trained by NASA and planned to join the Space Shuttle crew, in exchange for voicing a 3D IMAX film and helping "fix" their website.
So that's two things you didn't know about Cruise: he was almost a real life astronaut AND he's an enthusiastic amateur web developer.
Toni Myers, director of Space Station revealed the training revelation:
"Tom wanted to be an astronaut, he flies his own GulfStream IV Jet and he's quite qualified as a pilot. He was very enthusiastic about doing Space Station 3D but the deal was he also wanted to fly in the Space Shuttle.
"He had a very good chance of doing so but then the accident happened and that was the end of that."
As part of the training, Cruise underwent an induction course in Florida and was prepared for space walking by wading in a space suit in a water tank.
Of course this is real life. Of course Tom Cruise almost went to space as part of a space shuttle mission. He's the kind of man who will hang off an airplane for a movie even when it's entirely unnecessary, and the alleged stories of his Scientology related craziness are enough to make a film out of.