XRV "Marooned Movie" versus X-24A

Some thought.
Make a more realistic movie was not impossible.
Replace the XRV with an Apollo capsule.
Can be ready in the VAB for the next Ironman mission,or can be a rescue contingency capsule like for Skylab program.
Replace the Vostok type vehicle with a Soyuz (in 1968 the Soyuz design was available in west world).
More care for spacesuits: Apollo type is ok; the helmet i think is inspired by Apollo 9 type,but Russian suit is a disaster.

Three American astronauts — commander Jim Pruett (Crenna), "Buzz" Lloyd (Hackman), and Clayton "Stoney" Stone (Franciscus) — are the first crew of Saturn derived space station. While returning to Earth, the main engine on the Apollo spacecraft One fails. Mission Control determines that Apollo does not have enough backup thruster capability to initiate atmospheric reentry, or to re-dock with the station and wait for rescue. The crew is marooned in orbit.
NASA debates how a rescue flight can reach the crew before their oxygen runs out in approximately two days. In the VAB is ready another Saturn 1B with Apollo capsule for the next Ironman mission.
Ted Dougherty (Janssen), the Chief Astronaut, demands that something be done. The President of the United States of America agrees with Dougherty and tells that failing to try a rescue mission will kill public support for the manned space program.
While the astronauts' wives (Lee Grant, Mariette Hartley, and Nancy Kovack) agonize over the fates of their husbands, all normal checklist procedures are bypassed to prepare the Ironman-II rescue mission for launch. A hurricane headed for the launch area threatens to cancel the mission. However, the eye of the storm passes over the Cape at the last minute during a launch window, permitting a launch with Dougherty aboard.

Pruett (Richard Crenna) subdues an unruly Lloyd (Gene Hackman) in Ironman-1 There is insufficient oxygen left for all three astronauts to survive until Dougherty arrives. There is possibly enough for two. Pruett and his crew then debate what to do. Stone tries to reason that they can somehow survive. Lloyd offers to leave since he is "using up most of the oxygen anyway", but Pruett overrides him. He orders everyone into their spacesuits. He want leaves the ship, ostensibly to attempt repairs.
But a Soviet spacecraft Soyuz suddenly appears and its cosmonauts tries to make contact. It can do nothing but deliver oxygen since the Soviet ship is too small to carry additional passengers. One of two Soviet Cosmonauts perform an EVA and carries the oxygen packs to the Apollo. The hatch is open so the packs can be attached to the spacesuits connectors.
Dougherty arrives with Ironmen-2 and he and the cosmonaut transfer the three Ironman astronauts into the Apollo rescue capsule . Both the Soyuz and the Apollo return to Earth, and the final scene fades out with a view of the abandoned Ironman-1 adrift in orbit.

I think also that filming some scenes in a NASA "comet vomit" (like Apollo 13 movie) was possible also in that time (1968).
 
Necromancer warning: one major Doppelgaenger/Journey to the Far Side of the Sun plot hole is that as much as I like the philosophical ruminations of two mirror civilizations, the symmetry brakes down with respect to astronomy and stellar/planetary positions, which destroys the whole concept.
 
And getting Dove back to orbit…there’s that too….that’s the worst of it

The different stars I could actually forgive…in a reboot, I’d have an INTERSTELLAR type wormhole, and counter Earth be on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy in the spiral arm opposite ours?

Then everything having a different chirality might make a bit more sense…if that arm was a mirror.

You see that here:
 
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Dove being an SSTO with orbital capability in a one g atmospheric environment after a largely unpowered lifting entry is definitely *not* a plot hole, since it was clearly part of the original mission concept, however implausible in the sixties (as well as still in current reality, the LM X-33 lifting body wet dream [and pardon my double entendre with respect to the unsuccessful multi lobe composite material LH2 tank] being Exhibit A, and scaling issues as well as VTOL capability notwithstanding), but it was just your average futuristic (yet way more plausible than Star Trek) aerospace engineering hand waving, i.e. requiring quantitative advances of known technologies rather than radical breakthroughs at the time.
 
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The Buran size lifting body now debunked…what was the largest lifting body proposed?
 

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