They realize that something has gone badly wrong with the re-entry process and that officials can never release them because doing so would automatically expose the hoax. The captive astronauts board a plane to be placed in the spacecraft but the plane unexpectedly turns around and returns to the airfield.
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Upon returning to Earth, the empty spacecraft burns up due to a faulty heat shield during re-entry. Caulfield discovers that all evidence of his friend's life has been erased and begins investigating the mission, surviving several attacks on himself and his reputation. Whitter mysteriously disappears before he can finish sharing his concerns with journalist friend Robert Caulfield ( Elliott Gould). The conspiracy is known to only a few officials, until alert technician Elliot Whitter ( Robert Walden) notices that ground control receives the crew's television transmissions before the spacecraft telemetry arrives. The astronauts remain in captivity during the flight and are filmed landing on Mars within a studio located at the base. Initially they refuse to go through with the hoax, but Kelloway, himself under extreme duress (from whom, what, or where is never clearly specified), threatens their families if they do not cooperate, claiming a bomb will explode on a plane carrying the family members. At the base, the astronauts are informed they will help counterfeit the television footage during the flight to and from Mars, and that it is their patriotic duty to participate for the sake of national morale and prestige. The launch proceeds on schedule, but the public is unaware that the spacecraft is empty. Simpson) are removed from Capricorn One and flown to an abandoned United States Army Air Force desert base. Minutes before launch, the bewildered crew of Air Force Colonel Charles Brubaker ( James Brolin), Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter Willis ( Sam Waterston), and Navy Commander John Walker ( O.
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As the manned space program needs a success to continue, they find themselves forced to falsify the landing rather than cancel the mission. James Kelloway ( Hal Holbrook) realize, too late, that a faulty life-support system supplied by a lowest-bid NASA contractor will kill the astronauts during the flight. At an unspecified time, Capricorn One-the first manned mission to Mars-is on the launch pad.