The contest among wealthy men attempting to get into space continues. Last week came word from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos that come July he would be making a trip into space aboard one of his Blue Origin rockets, accompanied by his brother. Days after this, Virgin Group head Richard Branson announced that his own plans to go to space were being moved up so as to beat the Amazon CEO to the stars. Yet another man destined for a seat on a rocket has fired off about the whole ordeal with filmmaker Doug Liman throwing his two cents out there.
Best known for films like Edge of Tomorrow and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Liman is scheduled to go into space on his own as well, sitting alongside his collaborator Tom Cruise. The pair will not only fly outside of our atmosphere when they go, they’ll be working with Elon Musk’s Space X and NASA, potentially even filming scenes for the project aboard the International Space Station. That said, Liman has thoughts about Bezos’ trip to space, or rather “space” as he would call it, telling Deadline that the billionaire isn’t going far enough out for it to be considered real space.
“It’s good. If we can inspire kids to study science. I grew up dreaming about going into space,” Liman said. “I’m a bit snobby about it because Blue Origin is not going very high. Like, it’s space, but it’s not. I really think the moon or beyond is space.”
It was previously reported that New Shepard, the ship that Jeff Bezos will ride in, will take off on July 20th and will soar over 60 miles above the earth for just 11 minutes. The unofficial boundary for when Earth’s atmosphere stops and “space” begins, is known as the Kármán Line, which is described as being roughly 62 miles above sea level. To that end, Liman would be correct if Bezos’ doesn’t actually cross that threshold on his journey.
It was previously reported that Liman and Cruise’s trip into space was being delayed by virtue of being unable to secure an important production logistic: space insurance. A previous report indicated that an October 2021 launch would be when the pair would fly up, but their current timetable is now unclear
“From the first conversations that we’ve had about the film… how you insure it has been a central part of the conversations,” Liman previouslytold Collider. “So, we wouldn’t be talking about this movie if we hadn’t figured out a way to navigate the insurance component. So we have navigated it, but there would not have been a conversation about this movie without figuring out the insurance… it’s the same thing in Locked Down, one of the first conversations was about insurance, because of the pandemic… You can’t make a movie without having an insurance conversation. And [whether] you’re talking about going to outer space, [or] you’re talking about shooting in London in the heart of the pandemic, you know, insurance is gonna dictate whether that actually is possible.”
We’ll keep you posted as more guys with lots of money do their best to leave the Earth as we learn more.
(Cover photo credit: Roberto Machado Noa/GettyImages/Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)