麻豆约拍

A captivating space-based conversation packed with interstellar insights from one of the universe's biggest stars and a man who's spent time living among the actual stars.

Read on for the five things we learnt when the legendary actor and film-maker Tom Hanks and beloved British astronaut Tim Peake spoke to Dermot O'Leary on Radio 2...it's out of this world!

Tom Hanks quizzed Tim Peake on what scientific breakthroughs the astronaut had whilst on the International Space Station (ISS), opening up the topic of 3D printing in microgravity.

From the printing of plastic equipment for spacewalks, to the 3D-printing of human tissue, this pioneering technology is light-years ahead!

"So the process the pharmaceutical companies are now looking at is in ten years time," Tim revealed. "Perhaps printing out human organs from space, taking cells from patients here on Earth and actually printing out a heart."

"In microgravity you don't need a scaffold system, something like a very fragile 3D structure, which you can't possibly print here on earth."

Tim also emphasised the potential of space-printed protein crystals being used to treat life-threatening diseases.

"You can print protein crystals for diseases like motor neurone disease and Huntington's and Parkinson's. We can grow those protein crystals in space, bring them back down, and then create really pure good drugs with low side effects, low dosages."

Tom couldn't quite believe what he was hearing!

"Huge. This is huge!...I don't understand why this isn't front page news every time.”

When shooting for the 1995 Hollywood film Apollo 13, Tom Hanks described filming on NASA's world-famous KC-135 zero-gravity "vomit comet". Describing the experience, Tom explained that depending on the weather you could spend up to 27 seconds in zero gravity on the aircraft.

In fact, when adding up the total number of 27 second 0-G trips Tom took when filming, he came to an astonishing discovery.

"We added up we had as much time in zero gravity as John Glenn did on his three orbits." (referring to astronaut and former U.S. Senator John Glenn, credited as being the first ever American to orbit the Earth.)

If flying around at zero gravity wasn't entertaining enough for big kid Tom, he also told Dermot and Tim how he passed the time between scenes.

“If we weren't in the shot sometimes, we took up a badminton set and in the back of the plane played zero gravity badminton.”

How does that even work?!

What goes up, must come down. We all know that right? So when astronaut Tim Peake first launched into space he assumed coming back down to Earth would be just as smooth.

However, it wasn't so rosy when Tim recalled being on board the space station the night before returning home. He was with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams who said

"'Tim, I'm just going to talk you through the reentry. The spacecraft is going to blow itself into three bits and there's fourteen pyrotechnic bolts that go off right next to your ear when that happens, it sounds like a machine gun.'

"I was thinking, why has nobody told me this before? So I'm about to come back to earth. Surely this should have been covered in the training."

Despite an immaculate launch, Tim and the crew encountered system failures on their return.

"The first docking came in very fast. It came very close to a near collision."

The well trained astronauts efficiently attended to the emergencies,

"He [Jeff] had the sense to back off, bring it back, get the spacecraft under control." continued Tim. Ultimately succeeding in their landing, “the third docking attempt was thankfully successful.”

Although the centrifugal force on take-off was smooth for Tim, he went on to explain "the G-forces, the actual physical act of coming back to Earth, is very violent."

It was during the Obama years, Tim Peake spent twelve days training on NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, or NEEMO for short. The NEEMO project sends astronauts to live in the world's only undersea research station to prepare for future space exploration. It was the Artemis missions, focussed on redirecting asteroids, that Tim was preparing for in this case.

During the underwater space training there was a particularly exciting bit of kit he learned to use.

“The best thing was we had personal jetpacks. These sort of...propellers." says Tim.

Tom Hanks couldn't hide his excitement. "Oh, come on, sign me up." he said when hearing about this incredible technology, speaking for most of us. Who wouldn't want to try that out?

Tim explained further, "they were battery powered propeller-driven things that we'd strapped to our back with a push button.'

"And that's when we put fins on. And so with the fins, you could direct yourself around.”

Talk about finding Nemo on project NEEMO.

When questioned about whether he would choose to continue working with the International Space Station or pursue a lunar mission if given the opportunity, it's "the Moon every single time" for Tim Peake.

Emphasising the incredible potential of future lunar missions, Tim predicts we could be about to get some spectacular visuals.

“Do you realise in the next five years you're going to be seeing humans step onto the surface of the moon again, and this time we're going to have 4K colour HD cameras? I mean, it's going to be absolutely phenomenal.” he exulted.

Currently though, spaceman Tim is preparing for his next mission. “I'm helping to put together an all-UK mission working with Axiom Space at the moment in the UK space agency.”

To infinity and beyond! (We know...Tom Hanks was Woody not Buzz, but we couldn't resist!)