Does Tom Cruise Want to be 'Top Gun' in Space? (Video)

Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing Editor

A $200,000 ticket for a trip to space may be in actor Tom Cruise's future. The mega-star says he just might sign up for a real-life launch on a private spaceship, according to media reports.

The 50-year-old Cruise said he was interested in a spaceflight during the Moscow premiere for his new science fiction film "Oblivion."

"I'm going to let a couple of other people test it out first but it would be great," the "Top Gun" star said, according to the U.K. newspaper The Sun. "I was always hoping when I was a kid that we would be travelling to different planets by now."

A few private companies, such as Mojave, Calif.-based Virgin Galactic, are working to develop spaceships capable of carrying people on quick trips to the edge of space. For the price of a ticket, customers will fly to space without making a full orbit around Earth. The trip will give them an experience of weightlessness for a few minutes and a view of Earth from above.

If Cruise signs up, he won't be the first celebrity to do so. Actor Ashton Kutcher has already paid a deposit to Virgin Galactic for his ticket, becoming the company's 500th confirmed customer in March of last year. And actress Kate Winslet was reportedly given a free ticket to space by Virgin Galactic's billionaire founder Sir Richard Branson in thanks for saving his mother from a fire.

Cruise stars in "Oblivion" as a drone repairmen on a post-apocalyptic Earth that's been nearly destroyed by an alien invasion.

The actor said he was open to the idea that aliens exist in real life, and not just science fiction.

"I don't think you can actually count it out," he said, according to the Sun. "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!"

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