Salvage operator Harry Broderick buys and sells
scrap as well as electronics, aircraft and other equipment. Harry constantly has grandiose schemes to make money, sometimes not completely honestly. In the pilot, his dream is to recover equipment left on the Moon during
Apollo Program missions for he believes the salvage value will make it a worthwhile venture. In the show's opening title narration, Harry states: "I wanna build a spaceship, go to the Moon, salvage all the junk that's up there, bring it back, sell it." He recruits former
astronaut Skip Carmichael, who had departed from
NASA because his revolutionary but unorthodox space flight theory was considered too risky. Skip leads Harry to Mel Slozar, a genius fuel and explosives expert who had been working as a
pyrotechnics expert in the motion picture industry. Mel has formulated an extremely powerful but dangerous
monopropellant, monohydrazine, that would enable not only
single-stage-to-orbit but single-stage-to-the-Moon and back. FBI agent Jack Klinger is sent to investigate Mel's purchase of large amounts of explosive chemicals. They build a space vehicle named the
Vulture and Skip and Mel voyage to the Moon, salvage the equipment and return. The remainder of the series has the group embarking on various moneymaking ventures that Harry conceives, few of which involve the
Vulture despite its prominence in the opening titles.
The Vulture Harry built a spaceship dubbed the
Vulture, made from reclaimed salvage and former NASA parts. A cement mixer, a gasoline tanker trailer, and several surplus rocket engines (bought at auction when the space program was in a slump) became the homemade spaceship. After the pilot, the Vulture was rarely used. One of its engines was destroyed in the second-season premiere and it was never used again in subsequent episodes. == Cast ==