15-Year Old Girl Wins Battle For Gus Grissom's Spacesuit

In this corner, weighing very little and aged only 15-years, Amanda Meyer of Madison, CT! And in this corner... with the entire weight of the US government behind it and a reputation for chewing up inquisitive young people every morning at breakfast... NASA!!! There's the bell and... (rumble rumble rumble)... Amanda Meyers is the winner!

Well, almost the winner. As Aero-News reported in August, young Amanda stepped into the middle of a feud between the space agency and the family of astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, who was lost in the 1967 Apollo I fire. It seems NASA has Gus's Mercury spacesuit at the Astronauts' Hall of Fame. Gus's family wants it on permanent display at the Gus Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, IN. Of course you know, this means war.

But wait. Amanda stepped in and began a one-woman letter-writing campaign to convince NASA officials to hand over the suit.

The way the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel tells it, NASA actually threw the suit away. Grissom found it in the trash and took it home. In 1990, Gus's son agreed to loan it to the Astronauts' Hall of Fame. In 1997, the family asked the museum for the suit -- and was turned down.

NASA tells a different story. Space agency officials say they would NEVER throw a spacesuit away. If Gus wanted it for a speech, he would have had to sign it out. NASA says Gus simply failed to return the suit.

Amanda says it really doesn't matter. In the end, she says, NASA refused to give up the suit -- but did agree to indefinitely loan it to the Grissom facility... with a few caveats.

The family will have to come up with a special case to transport the suit and protect it from UV rays. The family will have to have the suit cleaned periodically.

So, leaning into the task, Amanda has come up with a plan. She won't solicit -- nor will she accept -- donations from the public. Instead, she figures companies like Lockheed-Martin, GE and Pratt & Whitney have made plenty of money on the space program, so they should be happy to cough up the $23,000 she needs for the case and the cleaning.

So far, the News-Sentinel reports, Amanda hasn't heard from GE. But Lockheed-Martin says her request is "under consideration."

You go, girl!

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.grissomairmuseum.com