The Zero-X was man's first attempt to reach Mars and the first twenty minutes of the Thunderbird feature Thunderbirds are Go was taken up with a homage to spacecraft that wouldn't be equaled until 2001: a Space Odyssey for pure devotion.  This gargantuan spacecraft was designed to take off from an airfield using giant radio-controlled booster wings, fly to Mars, explore the planet, and then return to Earth, where the wings would be reattached for landing while in midair. 

Needless to say, the point where disaster struck isn't too difficult to guess.

The first shot of the film showed the Zero-X hanger opening and the great space craft rolling out.  No, that's not true.  Rather, the entire front of the hanger slid underground and the rest of the hanger rolled away from the spacecraft.   After that, the giant radio-controlled booster wings were attached, the crew module rolled out and connected, and a giant steel aerospike was stuck to the front.  The methods used for each of these steps was plausible, even feasible, but, like the Zero-X itself, were clearly designed by a firm whose motto was "No budget ceiling."

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