Goofs for
Capricorn One (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• Plot holes: For much of the flight, and in particular during the launch when the astronauts have not yet been informed of the deception, we're told their voices from the spacecraft are simulated by recordings that were made during the practice simulations. This trick would stop working as soon as anything was said to them requiring a reply that had not occurred in the simulations, or as soon as they had any quiet time and would naturally be expected to chat about their present experience.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Lear Jet Pilot Clay Lacy appears twice in the closing credits.
  
  
• Factual errors: A title card at the beginning of the film indicates it is January 4. An onscreen announcer lists the time as three minutes after six, Eastern Daylight Time. Daylight Time normally doesn't begin until April.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Several times during the Mission Control scenes, references are made to "the LM crew," although we know the LM as the "Lunar" Module. But just as the real-life NASA renamed the Vertical Assembly Building in the space shuttle era to the Vehicle Assembly Building, keeping the initials, so on a Mars flight they might reuse the initials LM with a meaning such as "Landing Module."
  
  
• Continuity: Following the helicopter/plane chase, after the two government choppers crash into the cliffs, the crop-duster is seen turning right, and flying away. In this shot, one of the government helicopters can be seen flying behind the plane, in the lower left foreground.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After Robert Caulfield and Kay Brubaker sit down on the sofa for their second interview, someone's shadow moves behind Kay.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Just before the launch, as a man in a black suit walks across the capsule gantry to open the door and tell the astronauts to "come with me", a crewmember is visible. As the man is opening the capsule door, a crewmember's bare arm is clearly visible on the left helping him open the door. The man is wearing a black suit and the crewmember lending assistance is clearly bare-armed.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Caulfield looks at the magazines in Alva Leacock's apartment, there is a close up of the address label. The ZIP code is 80144. This is not a Houston ZIP code. All ZIP codes in Houston start with 77.
  
  
• Continuity: Several times a date is shown on the screen when we enter the mission control room. At the same time we hear a voice stating the number of days and hours since mission launch. The dates on the screen don't correspond to the number of days said to have passed between them.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Learjet takes off after the astronauts escape, the Government car windshield breaks before the jet passes over the vehicle. There are nine holes in the windshield supposedly made by a landing gear; the car is also pointed down the runway from the camera view inside, but the exterior shot the car is parked on an angle.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the wide-angle shot just after the Learjet's landing gear hits the Government car, a cable can be seen pulling back on the rear axle of the car.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the astronauts split up in the desert Col Brubaker (Brolin) says he's going West and tells John (Simpson) to go North, and Peter (Waterston) to go South. But actually John goes South and Peter goes North. This error is repeated later by Kelloway (Holbrook) when informed of John's death he tells the searchers to look West and South for Brubaker and Peter, instead of West and North.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Mars lander used in the film was an identical copy of an Apollo Lunar Module. The LM was designed as a true spacecraft - no aerodynamic design was needed to land on the Moon since the Moon does not have an atmosphere. A lander designed for Mars, however, would have to cope with a substantial atmosphere and would therefore look considerably different from that portrayed in the film.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the sun rises behind the launch pad, it is seen to move to the left as it rises. In the northern hemisphere, the rising sun appears to move to the right. The shot is clearly a sunset played in reverse.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Dr. Kelloway is trying to convince the astronauts to take part in the faking of the mission, he says that during the Apollo 17 moon shot, "People were callin' up the network and bitchin' cuz reruns of "I Love Lucy" (1951) were canceled." However, the Apollo 17 flight took place in December 1972, while "I Love Lucy" reruns had left the CBS network's daytime schedule for general syndication in 1967, more than five years earlier. Furthermore, viewers generally complain to their local affiliates, not the networks directly, anyway. However, Kelloway may well be saying anything he can think of off the top of his head to convince the astronauts to go along with the deception, and figures none of them follows reruns of old television series enough to catch him out.
  
  
• Plot holes: When reporter Robert Caulfield tells his editor about NASA technician Elliott Whitter's disappearance, he says that Alva Leacock claims to have been living in what he knows to be the other man's apartment "for over a year." Even *if* NASA engaged the connivance of the telephone company to change their own current records, they could not possibly have altered and/or replaced every copy of the telephone directory in the Houston metropolitan area, and just a handful would not only put the lie to Leacock's claim, they would also document Whitter's existence.
  
  
• Continuity: When James Brolin's character cuts his left pant leg to make a bandanna, the suit somehow repairs itself later on. Note when he's in the cave with the snake, the left pant leg is totally intact.
  
  
• Continuity: Elliot Gould drives to the air force base where the fake landing was filmed and finds James Brolin's medallion in the red dirt. Unfortunately, Brolin still had the medallion when they were flown out of that area to another place, when he used it to open the screws on the locked door and escape.
  
  
• Continuity: The controller who first discovered the distance error said the television transmission were coming from about 300 miles away, not outer space. Given that fact, if the crew were then whisked away to another distant location near the desert, and James Brolin's character was picked up in a car driven by Elliot Gould's character to make an appearance at his own memorial service, how did they get there in what must have been record land speed? His wife and kids are seen being driven to the service when he's hanging onto the crop duster plane. Then Brolin and Gould drive up in the same red sports car at the service.
  
  
• Factual errors: It's night at the launch pad as the movie begins. Everything is dark. When there is a launch pending at the Cape, the rocket and pad area are are brightly lit.
  
  
• Factual errors: All during the flight, and especially during the scenes from the "Martian surface", the astronauts are shown conversing with Mission Control in real time. While this was possible during the Apollo moon missions, with a round-trip light speed/radio wave travel time of 2.5 seconds, on a Mars mission any transmissions to Mars would take 12.5 minutes to get there, and another 12.5 minutes to return to earth. So anyone in Mission Control speaking to a crew member on Mars would not receive an answer for at least 25 minutes, making the kinds of conversations shown in the film impossible.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the Learjet lands in the desert, one can clearly see that its landing gear is fully intact. It was supposed to look like it was landing with the gear retracted, as landing on three wheels would cause the plane to spin around violently, but the plane is just too high up and the landing is too smooth for it to have been with the gear retracted.
  
  

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