I believe this is intended to beat America to the punch on a "movie filmed in space".

Tom Cruise has been planning his own movie filmed in space for a couple years and the Russians like to win space races when they can.

Also now they have the "first" one. That sells. Tom Cruise will be relegated to "second movie shot in space".

Kind of gimmicky though, no? And I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Just that CGI/practical effects would almost certainly achieve the same end result and be a couple orders of magnitude cheaper (or five OOM...).

The world just watched three billionaires make fools of themselves to establish space tourism and I'm sure Russia noticed. This is the director's second launch this year and I can't see the Russian film industry being able to recoup that kind of investment. He must have received approval from the highest ranks in Russia, if it wasn't their idea/bankroll to begin with. Innovative propagandists even if it does seem gimmicky.

>The world just watched three billionaires make fools of themselves to establish space tourism

At most two, surely - Branson and Bezos were rushing to get themselves (in their own untested launch systems) up to the Karman line and drop back down again. Although arguably only Bezos made a fool of himself by acting butt-hurt about flying after Branson.

By contrast, Musk is launching paying customers into orbit on a proven rocket system that launches NASA astronauts to the ISS, same as Soyuz. If somebody's willing to pay for the launch and risk their lives, why wouldn't you let them?

>and I'm sure Russia noticed

Space tourism is hardly anything new for Russia - as far as I know, all space tourists who've flown to orbit so far have done so on Soyuz.

I'm more upset that Roscosmos, in their rush to fly the film set to the ISS, endangered the station.

Hasn't Tom Cruise been in the news about doing this same thing? Only, once again, the Russians do it first.

Edit: clearly people dont believe me:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52556699

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/russia-racing-beat-tom...

Three? You mean two? Branson and Bezos.

Kind of sideways, but I’m tired of CGI these days, no matter how real it feels, you “somehow” know it’s not real. That’s why I like Mad Max Fury Road better than Dr. Strange.

They want the real deal -- CGI can't handle the nuances of astronaut bloat face, clearly.

Neither. It's suspected it's a government funded propaganda movie and that was one of the reasons the launch of the Nauka module was so rushed, they needed it for the movie production.