By Brent McKnight | 8 years ago

You a Star Trek fan?  You got an extra twenty grand or so laying around, not being used for anything else?  Want to own a one of a kind, if a bit haggard, piece of memorabilia?  Then today might just be your lucky day.  As it turns out, the original Galileo shuttle from Star Trek is up for auction. 

Judging from these pictures the Galileo has seen better days.  It looks like it’s been sitting in a backyard in Ohio for decades, exposed to the elements…. 

Perhaps it was left in a drafty garage with a leaky roof, forgotten for years until someone stumbled across it.  The prop is missing some doors, windows, and a couple of thruster domes.  You get the idea, it needs some restoration and TLC. 

None of this is going to stop the sellers from trying to get twenty large for the shuttle.  The craft is 24 feet long, 9 feet wide in front, 14 in back, and 9 feet tall.  And apparently the ships present condition isn’t that big a roadblock to some potential buyers.  At the time of this writing at least a couple of Trekkies have placed bids. 

Galileo, bearing the registration number NCC-1701/7, appeared in the episode “The Galileo Seven” in the first season of the original Star Trek series.  The craft, and the crew of seven it carries, become stranded on an alien planet.  Their desperate plan to escape results in the demise of the shuttle and so, later on there was a Galileo II.  This, however, is the original from which that episode drew its title. 

This is an opportunity to gain some serious bragging rights among your buddies, assuming they all love Star Trek, too.  The auction is going on now, and runs through June 28th.  Get your own piece of Star Trek history by checking out the auction site for more information and photos.