Plot hole: Further to the comments about the Lunar Lander being useless as a Mars Lander - who is going to believe that three men spent eighteen months crammed into a tiny Lunar Command Module? Not only would they go out of their minds, where would they store the tonnes of water and food they would need in that tiny capsule? How could the Service Module carry enough oxygen or have enough battery power to make the trip?
Plot hole: When the bomber is surrounded at the end he gets shot in the leg but manages to get away from all of the police that were surrounding him. They were literally an arm's length from him.
Plot hole: If they assembled the wet bike on the submarine, they wouldn't be able to get it off as it would be too big to fit through the hatch.
Plot hole: "The regiment headquarters calling for Corporal Steiner. Come in Steiner." The film starts with this repeating radio message. It's even heard by Steiner and his men who are on their hush-hush job behind the enemy lines: a reconnaissance mission. Calling Steiner just makes no sense, especially with the name.
Plot hole: During the intermission break of the championship game, Joe shouts about scouts from the NHL in the stands waiting to sign up the team. But Reggie is mystified about this before sending his team out to get rough again. Why doesn't the coach of his own team know about people from the NHL waiting to sign his players up?
Plot hole: Despite no one actually seeing the landing site of the meteorite, the sheriff takes his boat and the divers to the exact location of the rock. They go down and immediately find it.
Plot hole: The whole premise of the movie hinges on the fact that someone is going to try to buy the ship off James Coco for 3 millions, to try and sell it for 5 to Morris, who put a false ad on the newspaper but he's gonna hightail after. First; it's unclear how whoever checks out of the ad with the 5 million offer is going to be aware that Joe Lo Monaco has a ship for sale for 3 mil; he did not put an ad out himself, and who checks out of the morning paper looking for multimillionaire bargains on ocean liners? It's something entirely out of their league for the gang of small crooks shown in the movie and that Charleston ends up helping. Even more absurd is the fact that Morris plans to disappear after the 'sting', but he is running it with his own real name and in London, where he works as a high profile lawyer. Not the kind of person who can and would just 'disappear' into thin air, especially when the sting could have been done in any other part of the world.
Plot hole: Bandit and Snowman must have special powers to accomplish their round trip 1800 mile journey in the time they do. For starters when they begin the trip in Georgia it's sometime in the afternoon, and we later see them travelling at night before arriving at the Coors facility in Texarkana the next morning. This means the majority of their 28 hour window was spent getting TO Texarkana. So how is it they were able to both make the 900 mile trip back to Georgia while making all the stops they had to make, avoid all the smokies chasing Bandit off his path and give Bandit and Carrie time to be romantic all with only a few hours to spare after leaving Texarkana? At the very least it should have been late event or night time when they got back to their destination in Georgia.
Plot hole: If the vacuum is strong enough to suck up a hand grenade, why isn't it sucking up the ampules?
Suggested correction: You're assuming they travelled from Earth to Mars in the lander alone. The astronauts didn't do this when they went to the moon. The Lunar Lander was attached to the command module during the 3-day journey. When the astronauts reached the moon, they detached the lander from the command module and landed on the surface. It is reasonable to believe the astronauts for Capricorn One did the same thing, except on a much bigger ship for a journey that lasted over a year. We just never saw it.
Mike Lynch
The posting did not refer to the Lunar Lander, it referred to the tiny Lunar Command Module, the only part of the Saturn V that returned to Earth. From 44:00 to 48:08 of the film we see a live broadcast, supposedly from Martian orbit, showing all three astronauts crammed into a Lunar Command Module. The posting is absolutely correct.
This is another Deus ex Machina explanation for a blatant film mistake. The astronauts launched into orbit in a standard Saturn V rocket which could not possibly carry anything like a spacecraft large enough to make the trip to Mars. There is nothing in the film to suggest that there was a "much bigger ship" involved.
They are also shown seated in the tiny Apollo command module, supposedly transmitting messages from orbit around Mars. The posting is absolutely correct.
You're assuming the astronauts were launched in a standard Saturn V rocket, but with all the resources needed for a journey to Mars that took 18 months round trip, NASA would have to send them on a larger rocket to accommodate the required oxygen, water, food, spare parts, supplies, etc. needed to bring them back safely.
Mike Lynch
Did you watch the film? From 1:54 to 2:25 we see an establishing shot of a perfectly ordinary Saturn V rocket on the launch pad. From 6:05 to 6:43 we see all three astronauts strapped into the tiny, Lunar Command Module. As has already been pointed out from 44:00 to 48:08 we see a live broadcast, supposedly from Martian orbit, showing all three astronauts crammed into a Lunar Command Module. There is absolutely no mention of a larger spacecraft and none is ever shown.