Posted 8/29/2005 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

I for one welcome her plight. Not since 1965 has anyone given this much interest to Gus Grissom's pants. [Damn registration: try this one.]

A 15-year-old girl with a Web site, a summer of free time and an astronaut for a hero is trying to solve a 3-year-old dispute over one of NASA's earliest space suits.

The family of pioneering astronaut Gus Grissom has been trying to get NASA to give them his 1961 Mercury space suit. NASA says the suit is government property and an artifact that should be kept at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida.

Enter Amanda Meyer, space enthusiast and co-captain of her school's debate team. She believes she has a compromise and, after launching an Internet petition drive, has spent the summer writing and calling NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, Congress and anyone else she can think of.

Meyer says the government doesn't have to give up its claim to the suit but should loan it to the Gus Grissom Memorial, a museum in his hometown of Mitchell, Ind.

Come on, NASA, give the girl Gus's pants. She's cute:

Besides, who really cares, right? This is going to teach two very distinct lessons. First, it's going to teach NASA that the relics of the golden age of the space race belong in museums, and not where some pointy headed paper pusher decides they'll be. Secondly, it'll teach high school girls everywhere that petitions are ineffective, and a total waste of time.