Junkyard owner Harry Broderick assembles a team to pull off the ultimate salvage operation. With former astronaut Skip Carmichael and fuel expert Melanie Slozar, Harry builds the spacecraft Vulture in order to bring back the equipment left on the moon during the Apollo moon expeditions.
On their first authorized salvage job...an aerial survey of Antarctic icebergs...Harry, Melanie and Skip make an unauthorized stop on a supposedly uninhabited island to pick up valuable spider monkeys for a zoo. What they find instead is a lone scientist and a giant man-ape.
Harry takes his teammates on a sentimental journey to the Burmese jungle to recover the well-preserved B-25 bomber he flew in Doolittle's 1942 raid on Tokyo. They find that the plane is being guarded by an old Japanese soldier who doesn't know the war has ended. He takes the Salvage team as war prisoners.
While salvaging an abandoned government fallout shelter, an earthquake traps Melanie, Skip, a little girl and her dog. Harry puts together a rescue operation as he races against time to save them.
After Harry purchases a famous haunted mansion with plans to salvage it, strange things begin to happen. The Salvage team discovers it is actually inhabited by a strange alien waiting to be transported home.
At an auction, Harry outbids an antiquarian for a classic 1934 automobile he has always dreamed of owning. Harry and his crew discover a treasure map hidden in the car. The antiquarian, who is known to traffic in precious objects, doesn't give up quite so easily as the Salvage crew goes treasure hunting.
A plan to retrieve a gold-plated satellite before it falls from orbit hits two snags: the Government impounds the Vulture, and NASA offers Skip a long-awaited mission aboard a space station. A dangerous liquid nitrogen leak traps Skip and his fellow NASA crewmembers aboard the ship.
Conclusion. Harry convinces NASA that he is the only one who can rescue the crew-including Skip-that is freezing to death in an orbiting space station. Harry and Melanie launch in the Vulture to save them.
An African dictator kidnaps FBI agent Jack Klinger to exchange for a U.S. missile. The U.S. won't respond, but Harry does. The Salvage 1 team comes to the rescue while pretending to offer the dictator the Vulture as a weapons platform.
Skip and Melanie patch up an almost-human robot with damaged memory circuits, not knowing it came from a secret army project and is programmed to kill.
The air-freight delivery of a miniature locomotive involves the Salvage trio with the devious pilot of an undependable aircraft, a terrified fourth passenger and additional cargo of enormous interest to the FBI. The plane crashes in an isolated area and the Salvage team assembles a make-shift balloon in order to reach civilization.
Melanie develops a possible-and dangerous-solution to the energy crisis: using monohydrazine to blast new oil out of old dried-out wells. The experiment results in a catastophic underground explosion and fire that must be extinguished.
The salvagers hunt for legendary buried treasure at a Confederate paymaster's last stand. But they soon find that everyone wants them out of town and the real ""Confederate Gold"" is supplied by moonshiners.
The salvage team that went to the moon resurrects an old project: towing an Antarctic iceberg to a drought-stricken island off the California coast. Their plan involves using the Vulture's engines to direct the iceberg's course. The competition is a well-funded and unscrupulous corporation.
Harry and crew run into extreme difficulties in bringing an iceberg to California to be used as a source of water. The engine they use to steer the mountain of ice breaks loose and the iceberg drifts into the shipping lanes.
The Salvage team learns that a herd of wild horses are going to be shot as part of a government program to control their numbers. To save them (and make a profit), they round them up to sell them to a local police department as mounted patrols.
Skip convinces Harry to buy a race horse called ""Harry's Doll"", based on computer predictions that it will be a winner. When the horse breaks its leg in its first race, a NASA doctor is brought in to meld the bone using laser technology. Against all odds, the horse races again with young Michelle as the jockey, but will it win?
When a severe drought threatens a farm belonging to Harry's aunt and uncle in Arkansas, the Salvage team attempts to harvest rain from the clouds using a very unique method: heating the air above the clouds with flame devices mounted on an old biplane.
Harry treats the gang to a trip to Hawaii where they find he has other motives. He has arranged for a mining operation into the side of an extinct volcano to retrieve diamonds formed by extreme geologic forces long ago. However, the volcano proves to be more active than they thought.
