Tom Cruise Helped NASA Revamp Its Website More Than A Decade Ago

Laura Rosenfeld, Tech Times 19 May 2015, 10:05 am

Three Clicks to Oblivion is the Tom Cruise movie you've never heard of.

Well, that's probably because this isn't a sequel to Cruise's 2013 sci-fi flick Oblivion but a description of what apparently prompted Cruise to suggest to NASA to make some changes to its website back in the early 2000s. This is according to Sean O'Keefe, who served as the NASA Administrator from 2001 to 2004, during a May 11 panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cruise is apparently a big space fan. He even narrated the 2002 IMAX documentary Space Station 3D. He also once walked into the NASA offices with some IT advice for the organization. Here's how O'Keefe recounted the scene:

“He told me, ‘You know, you’ve got this great website with all this information on it, and it’s perfectly designed for a lot of research faculty across the globe, I guess, that is gonna be of interest to them. But to the rest of us, it’s three clicks to oblivion. You go to the next thing, and you find yourself nowhere.' And he said, ‘How about I loan you one of my tech heads,’ he calls them, ‘who design my movie trailers to take what you’ve already got — all of the information’s already here — and just make it more readily accessible.’ So I took him up on the offer, and it changed the appearance of that website in a way that made it inviting, interesting, folks wanted to participate."

Tom Cruise, taking on one poorly designed website at a time. Now that's a man of action.

You can watch the panel discussion in its entirety below. Fast forward to the 1:23:17 mark to hear the Cruise story.