American man Akaki Lekiachvili has spent the past six years working on a replica of the famous ‘Star Wars’ spaceship X-wing. After a lot of tinkering and welding, he succeeded in his mission. The next mission is to support Ukraine with the spaceship. He’s raising money by displaying the X-wing and may soon be selling his life’s work for the charity “I want to fight the evil realm.”
It may look like something from a far, distant galaxy, but this “Star Wars” X-wing starfighter came from a very earthly garage. The replica is the brainchild of Akaki Lekiachvili, a physician at the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In his spare time, he worked on the project for about six years.
Now that it’s done, he says he’s willing to use its power for good. “I want to fight the evil realm, just like in the movies”. For him, that means raising money for Ukraine.
He calls himself a “tinkerer” with a passion for space. “From childhood I always wanted to be an aerospace engineer, but my parents sent me to the medical school,” he says.
“My wife was not happy”
The project started in his garage, until the spaceship got too big. Lekiachvili then built a 10-foot outbuilding for his garage, but it wasn’t big enough to accommodate the fighter’s iconic movable wings once attached. So he set about building an X-wing hangar in his backyard. “My wife wasn’t really happy about it,” he says.
After six years of designing, tinkering, soldering, welding and building backyard hangars, Lekiachvili’s starfighter is finally ready to spread its wings, literally. The replica of the X-wing, about two-thirds the scale of the original, is operated with a wireless remote that opens the wings and cockpit window. It can taxi on the ground at about 6 kilometers per hour. In the cockpit there are two cameras and a targeting system like the one Luke Skywalker used to destroy the Death Star. The only thing it doesn’t do is fly and shoot lasers, although it does have laser buttons with sound.
The fighter jet was finalized in early 2022, just as Russian forces began to invade Ukraine. Because Lekiachvili and his wife, who is from Poland, both have relatives in neighboring countries of Ukraine, they felt a strong need to help. Instead of keeping his new toy locked in his hangar, they started sending it out into the world in an effort to raise money for Ukraine. “We send out the X-wing and people are queuing up. Kids want to sit in it, press buttons, take pictures and donate. We have already raised a lot of money,” says Lekiachvili.
$100,000
To increase donations, Lekiachvili hopes to appeal to Star Wars fans. He started a Twitter account for the X-wing which he believes caught the attention of Mark Hamill (or Luke Skywalker himself). The X-wing was also recently showcased at a “Star Wars” night in Atlanta.
However, Lekiachvili’s ultimate goal is to partner with a non-profit organization or someone who can help him auction off the unique “Star Wars” memorabilia, with all the money going to help the people of Ukraine. “I can build the X-wing, but raising money is not my specialty,” he says.
He estimates that building the starfighter cost between $50,000 and $100,000, but it was the experience itself that was most valuable to him. “I’ve probably completed a few Jedi training assignments in this process,” he says. “I believe that if we continue to push through, we will find the right strategy to make an impact,” Lekiachvili said of his fundraising efforts for Ukraine. “It’s a huge, huge tragedy. A lot of people are suffering and it is a really good opportunity to help.”
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