Trama

At Cape Canaveral, Florida on the morning of 4 Jan, NASA readies the spacecraft Capricorn One, the first manned mission to Mars, for launch. As the Command pilot Charles Brubaker and his fellow astronauts, Peter Willis and John Walker, are performing final checks inside the capsule, an official opens the hatch and demands that they leave the craft immediately due to an emergency. From the launch site, they are flown on a NASA Learjet to an abandoned military base in the desert. Meanwhile, the spacecraft is launched, and the control room in Houston, Texas is not aware that it is unmanned. At the base, the director of NASA, Dr. James Kelloway, explains to the astronauts that the life-support system, supplied by a greedy contractor, was recently discovered to be faulty, and it would have only kept them alive for three weeks. However, aborting the mission would destroy NASA's reputation and funding, considering the skepticism for space exploration within the current administration, as well as the waning interest among the public. To reveal the only available solution, Kelloway takes the three astronauts into the warehouse where a set has been built of a space capsule on the Mars surface. He says that mission control in Houston knows nothing of this staging because they are receiving information from the real command module in space, as well as the astronauts' voice and medical data recorded during the practice simulations. Kelloway assures the three men that they are only required to participate in the live television transmissions from the Mars landing and flight. When the module returns to Earth, they will be flown to the ocean landing and placed inside the capsule before the recovery vessel arrives. Charles protests the morality of the scheme and asks what happens if they don't comply. Blaming powerful interests, Kelloway clarifies that their families are being flown back to Houston on a plane rigged with an explosive device that will detonate if the astronauts refuse to cooperate. On 16 Mar, Elliot Whitter, a technician at mission control in Houston, notifies his superior Dr. Bergen that the television signals from Capricorn One are coming in ahead of the spacecraft signals. Dr. Bergen assures him that his console, which has malfunctioned previously, will be checked. Not satisfied, Elliot continues to research the data at home. On 14 May, while Houston mission control receives communication from Capricorn One that they have landed on Mars, Elliot asks Kelloway about the unusual transmission problem. Kelloway pretends to be grateful for his diligence, but dismisses his findings as a failure with the console. As the public watches on television, the astronauts take their first steps on Mars. Later during a game of pool, Elliot complains to his friend Robert Caulfield, a newspaper reporter who covers NASA, that his calculation must be wrong because it indicates that the television signals from the spacecraft are no more than 300 miles away. Their conversation is interrupted when Robert receives an unnecessary telephone call at the bar. When he returns to the pool table, Elliot is no longer there. On the Mars set, while Charles declares to Peter and John that he will not lie to his wife during tomorrow's broadcast, a technician overhears and warns Kelloway. In their final communication before landing, the astronauts speak to their wives from the capsule. At mission control, Kelloway observes closely and is ready to pull the signal if Charles tries to expose the plot. Although he hesitates at first, Charles simply tells Kay that he is going to take their son to Yosemite again as they did last summer. Upon learning that Elliot's phone has been disconnected, Robert arrives at his apartment to discover that someone else now occupies it, and there are no traces of Elliot. When Robert drives away, the brakes on his car fail, and he is unable to stop as the vehicle picks up speed through the streets. However, he manages to survive the plunge when the car careens off a bridge into the water. On 19 Sept, Charles, Peter and John are on board the Learjet flying to the capsule's landing site in the ocean. Meanwhile at mission control in Houston, technicians receive an alert that the heat shields of the capsule have disintegrated during reentry, causing the immediate deaths of the astronauts. Charles, Peter and John are returned to the military base in the desert, and Charles suspects that there must have been a problem with the reentry, which means they are now considered deceased. He proposes they leave the compound at once. They subdue Kelloway's men and seize the Learjet. Soon after takeoff, the plane runs out of fuel, and Charles must make an emergency landing in the desert. After divvying up the survival kit, the three astronauts begin walking in different directions to seek help. Charles instructs his colleagues to fire their flare gun if Kelloway's men capture them. Back in Houston, Robert replays footage of the astronauts' conversations with their wives and notices a confused look on Kay's face when Charles mentioned Yosemite. Later, she explains to Robert that Charles made a simple mistake. Their family vacation last year was not in Yosemite, but Flat Rock, Arizona. Meanwhile, Kelloway's helicopters discover the abandoned Learjet and begin a search for the astronauts, who are now showing signs of exhaustion and dehydration. Charles avoids detection by hiding in the sand and later in a cave, but the helicopters corner John, who has collapsed in a dry riverbed. Charles and Peter spot his flare signal. In the ghost town of Flat Rock, a gunshot is fired in Robert's direction as a warning to end his investigation, but he returns to question Kay further, convinced that Charles was trying to tell her something when he referred to their vacation. Kay shows him home movies from their Flat Rock trip, which documents a film being shot in the town, and she remembers that Charles was amazed how the filmmakers could so convincingly create reality. Back in the desert, Peter struggles to climb a cliff only to have the helicopters waiting for him at the top. Charles notices his flare, and Kelloway now instructs the helicopter pilots to focus the search west, in Charles' direction. Based on the research of his colleague, Judy Drinkwater, Robert drives to the desert to investigate the facility of Jackson, the only abandoned military base within a 300-mile radius of Houston. There, he finds a pendant with the inscription, "Bru from Kay." At a crop dusting company, Robert hires Albain to fly him over the desert to search for Charles. Meanwhile, Charles staggers to a deserted gas station and telephones Kay, who has just left the house with the children to attend the memorial service for the astronauts. Albain and Robert spot Kelloway's helicopters near the gas station and arrive just in time to rescue Charles, who hangs on to the wing of the bi-plane. In a midair pursuit, Albain is able to evade Kelloway's men by blinding the helicopters with crop dusting spray, which causes them to crash into the cliffs. Charles and Robert arrive at the memorial service in Houston while the President of the United States is speaking. Charles runs to the tent where Kay and the others are sitting. Everyone, along with the television cameras, turns to look in disbelief.