Hal Holbrook plays a senior NASA official who goes along with governmental and corporate interests and helps to fake the mission.

Another failed space mission would result in NASA's funding being cut and private contractors losing millions in profits.

The astronauts remain captive during the flight and appear to be filmed after landing on Mars, although they are actually inside a makeshift TV studio at the base.

At the command center, only a few officials know about the conspiracy until an alert technician, Elliot Whitter, notices that ground control receives the crew's televised transmissions before the spacecraft telemetry arrives.

Upon returning to Earth, the empty spacecraft burns up during atmospheric reentry due to a faulty heat shield, which would have killed the astronauts had they been on board.

Peter Hyams began thinking about a film of a space hoax while working on broadcasts of the Apollo program missions for CBS.

"[2] He later elaborated, in a 2014 interview with UK film magazine Empire : Whenever there was something on the news about a [space flight], they would cut to a studio in St. Louis where there was a simulation of what was going on.

The filmmakers were thus able to obtain government equipment as props, including a prototype Apollo Lunar Module,[8] despite the story's negative portrayal of the space agency.

In September 1976, it was announced the cast would include Elliott Gould, O. J. Simpson, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, and Candice Bergen.

Shooting locations included Cinema Center Films in Studio City, and Red Rock Canyon State Park.

"[3] The film originally was scheduled to debut in the United States in February 1978, but good preview screenings and delays in Superman caused it to move to May.

'[12]In Japan and the UK, a version with a running time of 129 minutes was released theatrically, with additional scenes such as the docking of the spacecraft during the Mars landing, and with different cuts of detail.

[13] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "an expensive, stylistically bankrupt suspense melodrama" while describing much of its screenplay as "humorless comic-strip stuff.

"[14] Conversely, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a surprisingly good thriller" with a runaway car sequence "that provides some of the best action footage I've seen in a long time.

"[15] Variety faulted the film's "underdeveloped script" and "scattershot casting", calling the duo of Savalas and Gould "a bullseye" but Waterston and Simpson lacking in "group chemistry".

[16] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times thought the beginning of the film was the best part, and what follows "is wildly uneven, veering between the serious and the merely silly, and ending up likely to please only the least demanding.

"[17] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Capricorn One harks back to the old adventure serials, but Hyams doesn't have remotely enough wit or technique to achieve a fresh stylization of vintage formulas.

"[18] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin stated "Somewhere within this flabby, overproduced fantasy about space-age double-dealing and Watergate-type sleuthing lives a smaller, tighter film—and a much wittier satire on the space program and technologies, like Hollywood, designed to deceive and manipulate.

"[19] In a retrospective review, AllMovie critic Donald Guarisco wrote: "This agreeable high-concept effort is one of Peter Hyams' most accomplished films.

The site's consensus states: "A string of questionable plot contrivances threaten to bury its story, but Capricorn One manages to unfurl an amusing, sharply cynical conspiracy yarn.