Grissom Spacesuit in Tug of War

About 1,300 people have signed Amanda's petition asking that the suit be returned to the family, the teenager said.

On her Web site ( http://www.freewebs.com/mercury7savethesuit/index.htm ), she asks supporters to target the Smithsonian, NASA and Delaware North Parks Services, the NASA contractor for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, with salvos of telephone calls and e-mails today. She has dubbed the effort "Freedom Day for the Liberty Bell 7 Suit."

"Gus Grissom is no longer around," said Amanda, who hopes to attend Purdue University -- Grissom's alma mater -- and become a lawyer. "He can't stand up for himself, and his family is not being given the benefit of the doubt. NASA is not giving them a chance . . . to do what they think would preserve his memory best."

Amanda acknowledges that her devotion to a man who died more than two decades before she was born is unusual. She admires Grissom because he was serving his country, and she believes that if he had lived he might have been the first man to walk on the moon.

The family has not met Amanda, although Scott Grissom, one of Grissom's sons, has spoken to her by telephone. The Grissoms said they are touched by her efforts but skeptical of her chances. "She's probably getting a lesson in U.S. government the hard way," Betty Grissom said. "I admire her for even trying. . . . She's had no encouragement from me."

Scott Grissom, 55, a pilot at Federal Express, said Amanda's campaign was "eye-watering" and probably a thorn in NASA's side. "It puts a lot of pressure on them because they don't like bad press," he said. "So, however they can shove it aside is what they are going to do. They are not going to return a spacesuit back to my mom."

Launius said he has not heard from the family. He has spoken with Amanda by telephone and invited her to meet with him the next time she is in Washington. He said he admires her passion but believes her Web site contains inaccuracies, including a line saying that NASA (rather than the Smithsonian) controls the suit, and her repetition of the family's assertion that NASA was about to throw it out in the 1960s.

The family agrees that Amanda has one detail wrong. Her site says the family would like to display the suit at a small museum that honors Grissom in his boyhood home town of Mitchell, Ind. Betty Grissom said she would rather see it at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center in Orlando, about 50 miles east of where it's now displayed.

The suit will remain at the space center museum at least until the end of the year, when the current loan expires, Launius said. Conceivably it could be moved to the Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, the Air and Space Museum downtown, or some other museum, if it does not stay where it is, he said.

"We'll see how this plays out," Launius said. "If somebody had a good rational reason to move the suit, we'd certainly consider that."