Huh; maybe they never saw the movie "Capricorn One"?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/
Unternehmen Capricorn (1977) - IMDb
Unternehmen Capricorn: Directed by Peter Hyams. With Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, Sam Waterston. When the first manned flight to Mars is deemed unsafe and scrubbed on the launch pad, anxious authorities must scramble to save face and retain their funding - and so an unthinkable plot ..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/