Tom Cruise’s secret NASA training
Tom Cruise secretly trained with NASA to travel into space.
The space-mad movie star agreed to narrate ‘Space Station 3D’, a short documentary film about the International Space Station, in 2002 on the condition that he could fly in the Space Shuttle but his dreams were put on hold when Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003, killing all seven crew members.
Director Toni Myers told The Sun: "Tom wanted to be an astronaut, he flies his own GulfStream IV Jet and he’s 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."
The Columbia disaster occurred when a piece of foam insulation broke off and struck its left wing.
Meanwhile, Tom previously admitted he believes in extra-terrestrial life.
He said: "I don’t think you can actually count it out.
"It might be a little arrogant to think we were the only ones in all the galaxies throughout the universe — but I’ve never met one!"
Although he has not yet managed to make it into space, Tom played an astronaut in 2013 movie ‘Oblivion’, the post-apocalyptic science fiction film based on Joseph Kosinski’s graphic novel of the same name.
