Nasa’s fake Mars mission: Why Capricorn One had conspiracy nuts seeing red

But somehow, the film is more pulse-pounding when it’s all shady officials standing around the control centre, whispering and plotting as the first threads of the conspiracy unravel. An innocent Nasa worker who questions the programme simply disappears – erased from existence completely – while the agents doing the dirty work go largely unseen.  

Released on June 2, 1978, Capricorn One was a hit. “The real reason why this movie became successful was because Superman was late,” later said Hyams. Indeed, Superman was meant to be Warner Bros’ big summer hit. It was pushed back to December so Warner Bros, the film’s distributor, gave Capricorn One marketing budget and cinema bookings that were earmarked for Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel. 

But, more tellingly perhaps, Capricorn One tapped into the post-trust era. “There was a quiet understanding that things aren’t what they seem,” says Peter Knight, “in the culture of the Cold War and the context of the US government having been seen to lie to its citizens with Vietnam and Watergate – and the revelations from the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976 [which concluded there was a probability of a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy].” 

Not everyone liked Capricorn One. Buzz Aldrin, one of the Apollo 11 astronauts and the second man to walk on the moon, critiqued the film on American TV. For Aldrin, it flew too close to the Apollo missions. He thought Capricorn One might suggest a deeper meaning. 

“It could have been made about the future,” said Aldrin, “but it had all the equipment showing the launch that was Apollo equipment, the Saturn V lifting off, and the spacecraft were Apollo command modules. I’m sure a lot of people came away after seeing this movie and [said], ‘They’re not talking about Mars, this is really because they faked the mission to the moon with Apollo and it never happened.” 

Aldrin delivered his review with a jolly demeanor though it’s fair to say he doesn’t suffer conspiracy fools gladly. In 2002, at the age of 72, Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist who accused him of lying about the moon landings.