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Any of you Remember Salvage 1 TV Series

Would the Vulture Space ship be possible with today' Tech Surplus?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 41.2%

  • no

    Votes: 3 17.6%

  • Plausible

    Votes: 9 52.9%

  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    17
  • Poll closed .
Buck Rogers

Buck Rogers

Captain
Captain
I Traded my Iron Man costume for a DVD set at a Convention in July,and it was the entire Salvage 1 TV series a four DVD set they had filmed two seasons,but only the two-parter Hard Water was aried the rest of season two was bumped due to Iranian Crisis coverage so it was canciled.
if anybody wants to discuss the show feel free to start the ball rolling.
As you know the concept is about a Junkman played by Andy Griffith that has enough money from buying and selling Junk to finance a mission to the moon to recover the surplus Moon equipment so he recruits an ex Astronaut,and an explosives/Fuel expert with the help of his Junkyard staff comprised of ex-NASA engineers he not only builds his spaceship,and flies to the moon,but recovers the moon surplus. His spaceship crew returns as heroes,and they have amazing adventures.
 
I remember that it existed, but I never watched it. I think it struck me as a dubious concept and it kept me away.
 
Was that the show where they used the rotating cylinder portion from a cement truck for the capsule? Always thought that was pretty clever... :lol:

Cheers,
-CM-
 
I very very vaguely remember watching it on television as a small child. Was there some episode where they flew on their junk rocket to some island in South America to save tiny monkeys?
 
I liked the original movie, which was just called Salvage, but it never made sense to me as a weekly series, because there wasn't really that much they could do with the concept on a weekly basis. It was a story about a guy who'd built a private moon rocket, but most of the stories were Earthbound. I don't think they even used the rocket all that often. It was a classic example of a premise that works well as a movie or miniseries but poorly as an ongoing series.
 
Christopher said:
I liked the original movie, which was just called Salvage, but it never made sense to me as a weekly series, because there wasn't really that much they could do with the concept on a weekly basis. It was a story about a guy who'd built a private moon rocket, but most of the stories were Earthbound. I don't think they even used the rocket all that often. It was a classic example of a premise that works well as a movie or miniseries but poorly as an ongoing series.
Click to expand...


That's my memory as well. I liked the tv-movie, but gave up on the tv series fast.
 
Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. Still, I hung in for the series, hoping they'd so something really fantastic with the Vulture.

The only sore point is the fuel. In the movie, they explain the Vulture's method of going to the moon (constant 1-g acceleration to the halfway point and then 1-g deceleration) was only possible by the special fuel the explosives expert cooked up. It apparently created a lot of force per liter with relatively little heat. You could not do the 1-g manuever to the moon with conventional rocket fuel because you simply could not carry enough.

As far the avionics, a MacBook with the accelerometer from an iPhone would probably do the job fine.
 
Christopher said:
I liked the original movie, which was just called Salvage, but it never made sense to me as a weekly series, because there wasn't really that much they could do with the concept on a weekly basis. It was a story about a guy who'd built a private moon rocket, but most of the stories were Earthbound. I don't think they even used the rocket all that often. It was a classic example of a premise that works well as a movie or miniseries but poorly as an ongoing series.
Click to expand...


Yep. As a movie, it was great, but as a series......

I was just thinking about the movie a while back and should see if Netflix has it. My son would probably get a kick out of it.

Griffith stars as a junkyard owner who builds a space ship from his scrap pile in order to retreive valuable parts left on the moon by American Astronauts.


http://www.imdb.com/SearchPlotWriters?K.E.G.
A group of people build their own rocket and lunar vehicles to return to the moon and salvage NASA leftovers. Cameras, vehicles, etc. All kinds of intrusion from NASA and other government types.



Salvage company sees a prospect in recovering abondoned items in space. They build a makeshift rocket and launch it amongst resistance from the government.
Click to expand...
 
I had read "The Man Who Sold the Moon" a couple years before seeing the Salvage 1 pilot. Very close concepts.
 
Forbin,
The costume did not fit me so trading it for the DVD set made sense as to a Macbook,a I phone to be used today for avionics in a homemade spacecraft that could work without using a guidance computer or using GPS a way to navigate could also be used.

Signed

Buck Rogers
 
I remember liking the series. I have to agree though that it was better as a single one-off movie than as a continuing show. I vaguely recall one episode had them arriving on a tropical island where they found a Japanese soldier who still thought WW 2 was underway. In the 1970s that was a story cliche that reappeared on shows that had run out of ideas (same plot was used for a Six Million Dollar Man, for example).

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing it again. I'm assuming the DVDs referenced are, ahem, unofficial as there's no indication of there being any sort of DVD release of the show, at least not here in North America.

I think this would actually make a cool movie remake. It would be quite topical, given concerns over space junk, environmentalism, as well as the move towards more privately-funded space flight. It might work.

Alex
 
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Wasn't there already a movie with a similar premise, called The Astronaut Farmer? Except without the salvage aspect.
 
The thing that made Salvage work as a premise was the fantastic fuel that, as I recall, had enormous energy potential, but was still relatively stable until ignited.
 
I have fond memories of that show. My mother watched it because she likes Andy Griffith, and I watched it because I was a kid and it had a rocket in it.
 
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