Even if you signed up to the website, the original Vanilla Galciv2 version was removed a long time ago.
At least as far as I can remember. I don't know what happened to the original author, I assume that real life got the best of him. He made a post a few months back stating that he was looking for help, and that the mod would move over into TotA, but nothing has been heard since. If you look to early pages, I even jumped in often to tell people to be patient, and see what happens. I was one of a small number of people who could access the forums, which have since effectively died.
( BEGIN LONG OPINION PIECE ) 
I personally have hoped to see something like the SFC or Bridgecommander communities form here, where people would release individual ships that people could pick and choose from. I think it would have been a massive boost to the Galciv modding community.. and acted as a strong suppliment to the big total conversions taking place. In my view, if individuals made and released ships like in SFC/BC, there would be a pool of already prepared ships for the total conversion teams.... And in the case of the Trek mod, could have sped things up considerably.
Sadly, this was not the case. If a full read me with the mod existed, stating who made the ships for SFC/BC, and contact with the mods author could be gained, perhaps permission could be gained, where the ships could be taken from the mod, and released individually or as race packs for people to use in their games as they see fit.
I just don't see that happening, and with the amount of time the total conversions are taking, i'm not sure how long Galciv will continue as it is.... It seems to me that the modding of the game has slowed to almost nothing in recent months, and I've even uninstalled the game on my gaming PC to make way for other games. At the moment, Space empires 5 is filling my 4X needs... and fallout 3 does the rest.
I think Galciv really needs small scale modding like SFC/BC to keep people active, because teh TC's are taking so long, the community may die out before anything significant arrives. ( something I hope does not happen!!! )
( OPINION PIECE OVER ) LOL
