After a harrowing flight in a crop dusting plane, the pair arrive at the televised memorial service for the astronauts just as the President (Norman Bartold) is giving a Kennedy-esque speech explaining how the mission rallied the American people around a common hope and dream. Willis and Walker are captured by the government and presumably killed off camera, while Brubaker is rescued by Whitter. As they set off in different directions across the stark, hostile desert surrounding the base, they ironically encounter a number of life threatening situations that they would have had to overcome on Mars, including surviving a lack of water and negotiating an alien landscape. The astronauts realize that they are “dead” to the world and a liability to NASA, so they attempt to escape in order to avoid being murdered. The ruse largely goes as planned until reentry, when there is a technical problem and the capsule burns up. As the conspirators make several attempts on his life, Caulfield comes closer to the truth with the unsuspecting aid of astronaut wife Kay Brubaker (Brenda Vaccaro) and a secret message her husband manages to sneak into his last radio communication on the supposed return to earth orbit (a reference to a past vacation at a soundstage in Flatrock, Arizona). The reporter becomes alarmed when his friend not only disappears without a trace, but all records of his existence appear to have been erased. First, Elliot Whitter ( Robert Walden),one of the mission control workers, not only notices a discrepancy in the signal that is supposedly coming from Capricorn One (he realizes it is coming from within a few hundred miles of mission control rather from millions of miles away in space), but shares his ill-ease about his superiors’ apparent disinterest with his puzzling discovery with his reporter friend, Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould).
The film highlights the difficulty in keeping such as conspiracy secret, even with the apparent support of the astronauts involved. Although the astronauts are skeptical about cooperating with this scheme, they agree to participate when their families are threatened. At the appropriate time, the return capsule was programmed splash down, but hundreds of miles off course, giving the conspirators time to fly the astronauts to the capsule before the military pick up ship arrives. The plan is to have the astronauts play the role of actors performing the mission from a deserted military base turned into a sound stage while the empty spacecraft orbits the earth. Based on the government’s already lukewarm support for the operation, it was decided to fake the mission rather than put the astronauts into imminent danger or scrub the launch (which would give the government the excuse to kill the project outright). James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) explains that two months prior to launch a catastrophic problem was found with the life support system and there was no chance of a successful mission. Simpson) prepares to launch, but at the last second the crew is suddenly whisked from the capsule and flown to a deserted military base while the launch commences without them. Synopsis: The first manned mission to Mars, a three-man crew consisting of Colonel Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Lieutenant Colonel Peter Willis (Sam Waterston), and Commander John Walker (O.J. government conspiracy to fake the first manned mission to Mars.
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