hi this is Jim from Trek world and today we’re going to go over the second video in our series of videos about Star Trek fans and their encounters with a Galileo over the past five decades so join me after the break as we go back to 1977 and look at exclusive fan encounters through narrative photos and videos please be sure to check out these other popular Trek World videos when you finish this one also if you hit that little like button on the screen right now you will be helping YouTube to show it to more people and give them a chance to discover these unique and fascinating videos as well remember you can submit your photos videos and other documents directly to us on the web at submit.trek-world.com the year is 1977. the first Star Wars film Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope premieres on May 25th and film goers line up for hours just to be able to see it Saturday Night Fever Sparks the Disco craze and the popularity of movie soundtracks
skyrocketed and in August of 1977 the Orbiter Enterprise takes her first Glide test and we begin the next chapter of our story in 1977 and I’ve chosen to refer to the grassy and all for what I hope will be obvious reasons as we progress ever since that fateful day in 1963 people have argued until they are blue in the face about whether or not there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll in Dallas so let me explain to you how a particular place in the harbor Lake area of Los Angeles ended up being just as enigmatic after talking with several fans Now everywhere you look on the internet recounts of the Court battle between Heisman and his neighbors will abound the story’s been widely reported over the years as the Galileo deteriorated more and more in his front yard the neighbors became more and more upset with a Heisman family as you may remember from our previous videos heisman’s relationship with his neighbors had already devolved to the
point where they were openly vandalizing the Galileo by May of 1975. it would take about two years after that for the neighbors to have the city declare the Galileo and eyesore and Order Heisman to remove it with nothing left to appeal Heisman moved Galileo to an outdoor storage facility named Rebel Mini Storage about 30 minutes away in Carson California well that’s the story in every book that mentions this tale there’s very little deviation from one account to the other but the problem is that’s not exactly the order in which things really happened you see to this day I keep getting emails from fans that recounted a slightly different Tale but they all had one thing in common the Galileo had been seen for well over a year at another outdoor storage location long before it was seen at Rebel storage Michael jarig saw the shuttle from the interstate daily when he was 10 years old his father actually
even retrieved the contact info for Roger and tried to buy the shuttle but they were unable to reach an agreement Robert Nassar also saw the Galileo and visited he actually went inside as the padlock and has but either been removed or forced open somewhere around 1977. notice that he actually references the chairs he saw in the Galileo now as I discussed in our first installment in this video series no one knew about those shares Roger added them over the years in his front yard but the doors were locked and only a handful of people were privileged enough to be given a private tour by Roger the chairs were not in the Galileo when it was donated from Paramount to the foundation of the junior blind and the chairs were not in it when it first showed up at Rebel storage later so when someone mentions the chairs they may not know it but they are actually mentioning something that only a true visit would have revealed and then only for a very specific period in time and
finally orbosphere gives us the very best written description of the location of the storage area right down to the obvious Ravine which is still visible on the right side today as you head from Palos Verde down toward harborland is at this point that I would like to introduce you to a man who I will refer to going forward as Racer X we’re gonna be spending some time with him in the next few moments and he has a very compelling and unique story now out of request for his privacy I’ve agreed not to reveal his name or anything about him that could be used to determine who he may be but there’s really no good way to gloss over this so let’s just go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off shall we now believe me when I say that I’ve gone over this in my mind a thousand times on how to present what I’m about to say in a manner that would not upset certain people on the internet I will tell you he has nothing to gain from his story but we have all seen that
we have some members of the Star Trek fan community that really do not like it at all when we begin to question what they hold up to be the real truth now they hang out on various corners of the internet and they attempt to discredit anyone who they may not agree with and disputes almost always turn personal you can even see one here they aimed at me they’ve been known to attack industry Professionals in attempts to discredit them as if their armchair quarterbacking makes them an authority on subjects that quite frankly are far outside of their chosen career path and as it was recently told to me by a former owner not too long ago these fans know absolutely nothing about what they’re talking about when they make these accusations so these owners they don’t even want to talk to us that’s a grown-up allegory for when your parents used to tell you this is why we can’t have anything nice
now earlier this year a comment was left on one of my phase two videos that caught me completely off guard this gentleman claimed to have actually had a screen used Galileo in his front yard as a kid no after just a quick back and forth I was prepared to file the comment away as interesting but it didn’t match any of the known stories of the Galileo over the years and his description pretty much led me to believe that he had actually been in possession of a fan created prop so I did some additional research after his comment and sure enough I found out that at least one full-sized replica had been on the scene at a fan event in 1975 in Maryland and just as he had described it had chairs consoles and an internal rear door so I mentioned that encounter in passing when I did the very first Galileo video I included the photos and a clip of our interaction in the comments my point for
even mentioning the comment was because I was already beginning to realize that the stories and memories were far more important than the prop but somewhere in the back of my mind I have forgotten memory was trying to get my attention knowing the meantime others quietly weighed in on the subject you can see the comment from varianted nine where they made the observation the two-door shuttles would not have appeared until the movies so perhaps this is a case of confusing the shuttles in this case no that couldn’t have happened because this gentleman’s encounter happened in the mid-1970s the movies were still years away at this point and it was shortly afterwards when I was reviewing the video again that I noticed something strange in the photos and film clips that I showed of the interior of the Galileo it was at this point the half hid memory jumped forward yelled ta-da the interior set did have two doors one down to the craft and one on
the back that allowed access to a storage room at the rear of The Craft ladies and gentlemen I present to you photos of that mythical second door contained within the interior of the actual Galileo shuttlecraft now remember that very few of the general public in the 70s knew that the interior of the Galileo was a separate set so when 10 year old Racer X saw the chairs rear wall and a door that Roger had done in the Galileo he didn’t realize it had been added after the series ended he thought he’d been there when it was used for filming in these photos taken by a fan when the Galileo was still sitting in heisman’s yard we can see the chairs that he had added sometime in 1977. you can also see two separate photos of that rear door you know when I was still pondering the situation I received a follow-up email direct from Racer X okay so I’m No Name
on YouTube and I posted a couple of comments in your first YouTube shuttle video I forgot all about this and this morning your follow-up shuttle video showed up in my feed now I watched it I was surprised to see our comments exchanged on the video you attributed my experience to possibly another TV show shuttle now I was 10 or 11 by that time so my memories of this were rather foggy so your explanation made me question my memory of this now that is until you showed the photos of the Galileo in the storage yard its first storage yard experience in your video showing the collapsed roof section and it all came back to me yes I had this exact shuttle in my yard art for one summer sometime between 75 and 77 I don’t remember but here is what happened no I was born and raised in San Pedro California as a kid I’d like to ride my bike all over the area with my friends we’d often ride past a large outdoor storage yard in Lomita California a town adjacent to San Pedro there was a slight
Hill next to the storage yard we would ride on it it would give us a great view of the yard one day I noticed the yard was almost completely empty normally it was filled with old RVs buses and decrepit vehicles and such and I spotted something interesting the shuttle your photos of the shuttle sitting in a storage yard hit me like a hammer it all came back to me so curious I wrote on it a lot and up to someone loading rubbish into a large dumpster and asked him about the shuttle no it wasn’t really familiar with Star Trek but I did recognize but this was pretty cool in spite of his condition the guy working there said the lot had been sold and was being redeveloped for a housing project he said the shuttle had been abandoned and that they were going to cut it into pieces and toss it in the dumpster within the next few days I asked him if I could have it he said I could but you’d have to remove it by the end of the week we checked it out inside now and my mom was in a few days later a tow truck driver was dropping off the
shuttle in our front yard it was very rough and we had to prop the falling roof section up with two by fours there was a console inside in the front that was mostly empty holes where lights had apparently been there was also a swivel seat at the console but it was a painted plywood prop and was falling apart in spite of its crummy condition my friends and I had a blast in it all that summer a few months later its charm had worn off and we had pretty much abandoned it for mini bikes another month or two it was hauled away as arranged by my mom and I never really knew the details wow what a brain Bender I am now remembering more fond memories about that time unrelated to the shuttle genuinely like to thank you for your videos on the shuttle now not long after our email exchange I spoke with Racer X on the phone and we discussed his memories he retold his story but this time I was able to ask some questions like where and when which are always really difficult questions to
answer when you’re dealing with an incident that let’s face it is half a century old so he sent me back some screen caps that he had done where he had marked on certain areas of this map where he believed he had actually seen the Galileo at and what we’ll do right now is we’re going to continue this thought by taking a look at one of the screenshots that he had shared that had two locations circled the first is where he believed the storage lot was remember he no longer lives in the area he was trying to pull up at best what was an early childhood memory at 10 years of age at the end of the day he did feel about 75 sure this was in fact the correct location so let’s overlay the map that Racer X gave me with a map that I had already started to try to determine where this story slot was with a map off of Interstate 110 in Lomita and as we begin to compare them it kind of looks a little familiar doesn’t it
in fact if we pull back just a little bit more you can see that racer X’s storage lot is exactly in the same location identified by about half a dozen other people as the lot that was in Lomita now in order not to taint the well so to speak I hadn’t shared the details of the people that had told me about the slot with Racer X I didn’t want to give him anything that might influence his story to me in fact the release of this video will be the very first time that he is exposed to the fact that several other people commented to me about Lomita even before he did okay there’s just no getting around this this is one where I have to make some assumptions mainly because what had to happen next happened between Roger and racer X’s mother and Roger hasn’t been available to converse and racer X’s mother unfortunately passed away some time ago so the details are probably
completely lost to time but consider this the lot in Lomita was closed the shuttle could not have stayed there racer X’s mom had to get the Galileo back into the hands of Roger if Roger was going to put it at Rebel storage so therefore what happened was most likely one of the two following scenarios one somehow they arranged to get the Galileo back to heisman’s house or two they arranged to have the Galileo delivered directly from racer X’s house to the rebel storage lot and this pretty much will conclude our time with Racer X I’m going to leave it up to you the viewer to determine how you exactly feel about the evidence that we’ve looked at today the reality of the situation is okay he could either be mistaken about this encounter or he could be correct at the end of the day perhaps the only person still alive today is Roger and