Neil deGrasse Tyson Fact-Checks ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: Tom Cruise Should Be ‘Very Dead’

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is calling Tom Cruise’s stunts in “Top Gun: Maverick” an impossible mission.

The global blockbuster sequel to “Top Gun” begins with Cruise, reprising his role as Navy pilot Maverick, hitting Mach 10.5 and having to eject from the cockpit. Tyson took to Twitter to point out that Maverick would “splatter” immediately after leaving the plane.

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“Late to the party here, but in this year’s ‘Top Gun,’ Tom Cruise’s character Maverick ejects from a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed. He survived with no injuries. At that air speed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm,” Tyson tweeted. “At supersonic speeds, air cannot smoothly part for you. You must pierce it, which largely accounts for the difference in fuselage designs between subsonic and supersonic planes. For this reason, the air on your body, if ejecting at these speeds, might as well be a brick wall.”

Tyson continued, “When Maverick ejected at Mach 10.5, he was going 7,000 mph, giving him 400 million joules of kinetic energy — the explosive power of 100 kg of TNT. A situation that human physiology is not designed to survive.” He added: “So, no. Maverick does not walk away from this. He be dead. Very dead.”

Later, as part of the mission for the Top Gun pilots, Tyson wrote that “they dangerously fly under the radar, through a narrow, winding canyon to destroy a target, avoiding multiple banks of surface-to-air missiles. But why not first take out the missile banks? Could then fly without daredevil maneuvers. Just sayin’.”

“Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda filmed over 813 hours of aerial footage with the actors, led by Cruise, really performing their death-defying stunts.

“It’s like making a play,” Kosinski told IndieWire. “You create the performance in rehearsal and then it’s performed. We had a big monitor and went over every shot of the day, every storyboard, every piece of previs, every line of dialogue. We’d talk about the altitude of the jet, the terrain, the maneuver, the line, the eyeline, where the sun needs to be. It was laborious but necessary, with safety being the most important consideration.”

Meanwhile, “Mission: Impossible” star Cruise has his sights set on more out-of-this-world stunts: becoming the first actor to shoot a film in space. Cruise has teamed up with “The Bourne Identity” director Doug Liman for a feature set at the International Space Station.

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