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April 18 (UPI) -- The original model of the starship Enterprise has returned to the family of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Heritage Auctions last week returned the long-lost model, featured in the original Star Trek series' opening credits, to Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry Jr., CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment and son of the late Gene Roddenberry, the company announced on Thursday.
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The three-foot-long USS Enterprise was believed to have disappeared in the 1970s when Gene Roddenberry loaned it to the makers of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
It resurfaced last fall when an unnamed person discovered it and brought it to Heritage for authentication. The auction house then contacted Rod Roddenberry to coordinate its return.
"Once our team of experts concluded it was the real thing, we contacted Rod because we wanted to get the model back to where it belonged," Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena said in a statement. "We're thrilled the Enterprise is finally in dry dock."
Walter "Matt" Jefferies designed the original USS Enterprise and was the namesake of the Jefferies tubes referenced in numerous Stark Trek episodes.
Jefferies, in the 1968 book The Making of Star Trek, said the ship's design was based partly on designs from NASA, Douglas Aircraft and other aerospace engineering outfits, and that Gene Roddenberry wanted the ship to be "believable."
"My feeling was that if you didn't believe in the spaceship, if you didn't believe you were in a vehicle traveling through space, a vehicle that made sense, whose layout and design made sense, then you wouldn't believe in the series," Gene Roddenberry wrote in book.
Once Roddenberry and Jefferies agreed on a design, model-maker Richard Datin Jr., built the three-foot, wooden, hand-painted model, which would appear in the show's opening credits and in the pilot episode "The Cage."
The model now in Rod Roddenberry's hands also was the prototype for the 11-foot-long Enterprise famously on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
"After five decades, I'm thrilled that someone happened upon this historic model of the USS Enterprise. I remember how it used to adorn my dad's desk," Rod Roddenberry said.
"I am tremendously grateful to Heritage Auctions for facilitating the return of this iconic piece of Star Trek history to my family. I can't wait to figure out how we are going to share it with my extended family, Star Trek fans around the world."
