Capricorn One (Spoilers)

What?

 

"The mission itself" didn't make a lick of sense. In the movie they use something like a LEM to land on Mars

And in theory they should have made the journey of I don't know how many months in a capsule the size of the Apollo.

The details of the mission itself were the most unrealistic thing about the film

 

I like the subtle hint in the conversation with the families that tells them something's wrong.
Wish it hadn't ended with the guy just getting to his funeral - it was like the sudden end of TATV

 

I thought this was a new thread and almost made the same comment I made 15 years ago.

 

Another one of those movies that my dad and I shared a love for and would watch whenever it cam on TV. While it still holds up for me, I too, wish it didn't just end as Bru is running toward his funeral. That being said...

Could you imagine the fallout from this, even back before the days of 24 hour news cycles and social media? This scandal would have rocked not only NASA but the government to their core. It would have set the space program back by years, if not completely destroyed it.

I guess they could have taken the easy route by just doing a quick "explain away" with montage footage. But even that would have been a decent ending to the movie.

Along those lines and for those of you who are "For All Mankind" fans, it will be interesting to see how last season's revelations and the finale shake out for the new season.

 

I don't know, the mission did arrive to Mars, albeit without crew. I must say that in theory it would have been an even more difficult undertaking. What would they do if there was a malfunction or similar during the mission and only the astronauts would be able to fix it?

If I remember correctly, there were some problems with some component suppliers (right???). In theory, what should have been done was to create more stringent regulations in this sense.

 

By the way, wouldn't the Russians/Soviets have exposed the cover-up right from the get-go, considering that the technician figured out where the signals were really coming from?

 

Creature Features recently aired this, and, after not seeing in since it first came out in theaters, I was struck by how small the command capsule and lander were. It looked like a normal Apollo command module.

They (the filmmakers) didn't really even try to upscale the vessel. Imagine being (supposedly) stuck inside that capsule for 4-5 months it took to get to Mars.

It's funny, when Creature Features ran Meteor a few weeks later, that film also had a mission to Mars/Jupiter early in the picture, but at least they tried to show a Skylab type space vehicle where the astronauts could move around.

 

Well, Meteor is a proper sci-fi movie, while Capricorn One is more a political thriller. The journey to Mars is little more than a pretext to stage a mega-conspiracy, so it makes sense that they didn't put too much effort into this aspect of the film.

 

I think this thread has the record for "Oldest Zombie Revival" - Jeez how many pages back did the re-instigator need to go?

 

Spoiler alert: It ends with Barbara Streisand's two husbands running toward a funeral.

 

Didn't the capsule burn up/crash on re-entry?

If that was the case, then they wouldn't need to keep the astronauts alive, they would need the bodies in case the capsule was recovered. You can't have an empty capsule.

I commented in the "Creature Features" thread that the story would eventually fall apart even if the capsule made it safely back to Earth.

After months in space, the astronauts would be subjected to a thorough medical examination, and as we've discovered, people who spend large amounts of time in low gravity have atrophied muscles and other medical issues that come from being in space for an extended period of time.

Any doctor worth their salt would have immediately realized that those men hadn't spent nearly half a year in space; they would have been too healthy.

The government might have been able to fake medical records, but are they going to try and keep the astronauts isolated from their families while they supposedly recovered from their long trip?

 

That's true -- however, at that time the conspirators were desperate. At that point, "escaped" was not very far from "conspiracy exposed", so the military would be expected to be "no holds barred".

There was a reason why the three were not immediately shot after completing the surface sequences -- obviously someone was wary about the false landing being discovered. The astronauts were alive and ABLE to escape, because someone was waiting to see if the fake landing was secure. Again, a faked mission is much less condeming than three assasinations...

It makes no sense that the Nasa employee disappearing but the reporter being left alive, intending to be intimidated by the false cocaine charge. But if the astronauts had not yet expired, that's consistent with "fear-of-discovery"...

I think I'll have to get one of those to read. They aren't cheap, by what I see so far...

 

They just re-ran the movie on Comet, aired several times, hence my curiosity.

Besides, time is relative, Einstein said that...
{;-p

My condolences -- I understand first-hand about losing people we love, it's pretty hard. I do have a spiritual perspective, so I don't believe that good-byes are forever...

(Consider yourself hugged, in a platonic brotherly way...)

I think (just my own inclination) eventually they would have to be "terminated"; but as posted above, there had to be a reason why they were still still alive to be able to escape. And yes "if the capsule was found there would have to be bodies", but it's pretty easy to explain a missing capsule. I enjoy the tv series "Mayday" (not the episodes with no survivors, I really like the ones were everyone walks away!)-- it's common for missing aircraft to stay missing when they are somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. "Needle-in-a-haystack".

 

Absolutely agree. In the movie, "The Martian", they used a ship that had a spinning section, so they would experience gravity.

But I really think we have no business going to other planets unless we solve three technologies -- electro-gravitic propulsion, ftl travel, and the power to run them. Confidentially I think those already exist (we wouldn't need a "Space Force" unless we actually had vessels). Physicist Miguel Alcubierre explained in 1994 how we could travel faster than light, and it's not that complicated (it exploits the Casimir effect of dialectrics, rather than exotic matter). NASA has been "working on it". But obviously if an actual ship (or ships) exist, they would have to be covert. Sudden access to unimaginable mineral wealth would bankrupt global economics.

(...that said, even without an Alcubierre drive, we have to land on and inhabit the Moon, else China will get there and claim tons of Platinum, Iridium, etcetera...)

With an Alcubierre drive, traveling to the Moon would take only a few seconds, and to Mars a few minutes. So no languishing in space for months suffering harsh unfiltered radiation, no worrying about a sudden solar flare exterminating travelers instantly, and they could "tunnel under" the Van Allen Radiation Belts avoiding serious exposure.

 

I'll check it out. I've been watching a few older 70s/early 80s genre films lately that I missed as a kid:

Saturn 3
Escape from NY
Outland

 

I love Outland. Never got around to updating to blu-ray, but I probably should because the DVD looks awful in a lot of places.

 

"Outland" and "Escape from New York" are quite good.

I've always considered "Outland" to possibly be set in the same universe as "Alien" as it has that same "truckers in space" vibe going for it.

"Escape from New York" is a great "B" movie with a young Kurt Russel doing his best Clint Eastwood impersonation. Which makes sense in a way since he's acting opposite Lee Van Cleef. I have the novelization and it's much more nihilistic than the movie. You get the scene that was cut from the movie where Snake and his partners rob the Federal Reserve and Snake is captured. You get the background of the war and why Manhattan was sealed off. No one remembers who fired the first shot or why, but that early in the war, all sides agreed that no nuclear weapons would be used, however, the use of chemical warfare was approved, everything from the Rockies to the West Coast is blanketed under a cloud of toxic chemicals with the general population slowly going mad from chemical poisoning. You get the feeling that mankind is teetering on the edge of complete anarchy/destruction even if the President was able to come to the negotiating table with the plans for nuclear fusion.

"Saturn 3" is a mess. Kirk Douglas is too old and out of shape, and we don't need a nude scene. Farrah Fawcett can't act, and whoever's idea it was to dub Harvey Keitel with the voice of Roy Dotrice should be taken out and shot. The only good thing about it is the set design and Hector the robot/cyborg

 

Saturn 3 was so bizarre that it was good, in a "I can't look away" sort of way.