Hence my earlier suggestion of letting the guy who blew their cover die a hero's death by holding the line or something when they are getting their buddy rescued. My point was that neither killing off the whole group, nor even the single player is always the best way to handle these things. It can be done by just rolling with the punches, let the players make their mistakes, and "oh well - it's just a game and now that all that is out of their systems let's talk about what went wrong and move forward with the campaign."
I have had so many games go bad over several decades of play in about every game you can imagine (including ones you've probably never heard of) because of somebody doing something that left the rest of the group shaking their heads in wonder that it no longer surprises me what any given player will do. Nobody I know is in real life a wizard, troll, trollkin, space marine, nuclear apocalypse survivor, or captains a frigate. So when they do something that seems stupid to me I have to take into account that they are trying something they might not do in RL as a character in a fantasy game and so I try to be as proactive as possible when they start to describe what they are going to do.
Call of Cthulhu and Runequest had the Idea and Knowledge Rolls as great mechanisms for this sort of thing: if a player wanted to do something their character might or might not know about he/she would either toss me a piece of paper beforehand (if they had played with me a few times) to see if I'd let them, or they would have to roll for Idea (to think of it), or Knowledge (if they know about it even if they didn't have the skill it involved). If they passed the roll they could do it.
For Traveller you can use the skills the player has as a limiting factor, and/or you can use their IQ and Education for, respectively, Idea and Knowledge rolls. I use 3D6 against the stat as the roll for success. If the player comes up with something you don't think their character should know or be able to come up with then just have the player roll against the appropriate skill or stat - success doesn't mean they will be able to do what they plan, but it could mean the character came up with the plan and now clearly sees the drawbacks (or requirements for success) to it instead of just blindly going ahead. If the players fails it, then you could point out that (even if it was a good plan that might work) there was no way it would work without them all dying because of x and y. It may not be the truth but since the player lost the roll you can sell it as such, and it is defensible later if they contest it after the game.
So player A wants to storm the castle and mount a rescue. The castle has an AA gun on a tower protecting it. The players have an air/raft. Assuming they have someone who can fly it they decide to use the air/raft to go in and get their buddy. Well and good. You say, "What's the plan" and the guy with the idea tells you - you check to see if he has, say...Recon (to suss out the defenses of the castle)...FA Gunnery or even Ships Gunnery (to know the potential weaknesses and strengths of the gun emplacement)...Air/Raft or Grav Vehicle (potential for air/raft issues and damage)...Leader...to have the rest of the team go with him on this)...Tactics (covers nearly everything about the plan - score on this and its probably a good plan and should work)....
Success on those skills should reveal all the strengths and weaknesses....feed more weaknesses to the group as a referee and they will either fix them or not do it at all. Use IQ and Knowledge if the above skills are not all present - again, you could even just feed them more negatives using even successful rolls to influence their decision.
Just don't ever assume, however, that if you are just passively allowing the players to kill themselves off that you are doing a good job as a referee. In addition to maintaining the impartiality of the letter of the rules, you are also supposed to allow for the spirit of them. That means maintaining balance and fun in the game by giving the players all the information they could reasonably come up with if they were really those characters. So a Scout ship captain with 4 terms in would probably know a thing or tow about scoutships even if he didn't have Engineering. He's just not an expert on drive systems, but he could tell what's wrong and how to fix it if he had the instructions and the parts. Likewise a character who had several terms in the military would be able to know if something was a good plan or not and with judicious use of the skills he and other have could at least know all the plusses and minuses of the plan and not just blindly go off to his death.
The ref should point all that out in instances like this, especially since it could effect the whole group. To not do that doesn't mean you have stupid players, it means you are a lazy referee. Sometimes the dice, fate, or rankest stupidity do work against a player, but since a lot of characters are smarter and/or better educated at what they do than the player that should be the exception, not the rule. I've always had better games and more enjoyment for everyone when I always kept that in mind. As a result, when things have gone horribly wrong those events have become some of the best stories later since they were like something out of a bad movie we could all say was so bad it was good.
I'm not preaching here - just giving some ideas born of experience and many, many shifts in game refereeing and play, alike over the years. I don't know your style, but once I was no longer a teenager in the heady days of the original D&D rules back in '76 I stopped treating my games like it was me as the ref against the players. Both I and the players had a lot more fun as a result, even though sometimes things still went horribly wrong. A good referee always has all the bases covered for success and failure in any given adventure and can wing it knowing what those will be as a guide. If the thing is failing epically - just toss it and start over with lessons learned for all - no harm no foul, just call it mutual combat and move on to better games.
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But, I will add, "Preach it brother sabredog! Preach it!"
Right now my only concern is that the dice will continue to favor them and they'll kill the warlord and his men in some sort of supernatural slaughter because their dice are on fire and mine went cold (I tend to roll in front of my players more than not... probably shouldn't for the next session). 
