After he was chosen as one of the Mercury 7 astronauts in 1959, Gordon Cooper was asked if he was bothered by his relative lack of experience vis-à-vis his peers, nearly all of whom were combat-roughened test pilots. Not at all, he said. In fact, Gordo figured that because he was the youngest, he would probably be the only one among them to go to Mars.

Four decades later, Cooper told CNN, "I'd go back in a second." He was envying John Glenn's return to space, adding, "But what I'm really holding out for is a Mars mission."

Quaid sat down to discuss his latest film, Frequency, a supernatural, science fiction-flavored story in which ham radios serve as time-travel and destiny-altering machines.

In Frequency, a police detective named John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) inadvertently reaches back in time -- across a "parallel universe" opened up by solar storms -- and finds himself talking to his dead father, Frank (Quaid), who is somehow still living in 1969.

Visual effects beautifully portray the wild flares of aurora borealis that seem to enable their connections, which take place over consecutive nights in the same den, in the same house, at the same desk, and via the same radio. The scenes were Quaid's favorites.

"What I like about the movie is he's talking to his father as a peer. Having a conversation in that context, I found, was interesting," Quaid says. "Communicating across time -- what if you could change your past by playing God with your own destiny?" That's what happens in the film, but when the future-tampering runs amok, father and son are forced to grapple with a murder mystery, too.

The radio sequences were shot live, in a sense, on two sets on the same soundstage with two camera crews filming simultaneously -- a literal working of the film's synchronicity motif. "The voices were really coming out of the radios," Quaid said, eyes brightening. "It was a great way to work. I haven't seen the end product yet, but at the time it felt like we were doing something special."

In addition to his happy memories of playing space travelers in The Right Stuff as well as Enemy Mine, Quaid also expressed admiration for firemen, since he plays one in his new movie.

"They are true heroes. I have such an appreciation for what they do now," he said. "I will say this about heat: It becomes like an animal, one that's out to get you. It's -- intense."

But when asked about actorly stuntwork, Quaid shrugged off an opportunity to brag. "They always say that, but the insurance company's not going to allow it, really," he said, laughing.

Quaid, who grew up in Houston ("which was Space City"), said that when he'd read The Right Stuff -- a year before the movie went into production -- "I wanted to play Gordo Cooper. And then I got the role, I couldn't believe it." In preparation, Quaid got his pilot's license and was only too happy to meet "the real-life Gordo Cooper, who lived about five miles from me" in Los Angeles.

"Space is like Columbus in the New World," Quaid said. "We're gonna go out there and colonize Mars and the other planets, we're gonna go out to other stars and solar systems. It's just inevitable. I think my son's children might actually witness people who were born on Mars." It seemed a statement worthy of Gordo himself.