Bargain bin NASA flightsuit find worth big bucks

TITUSVILLE, Fla. - Talia Rappa and Skyer Ashworth turned summer bargain shopping at a Titusville Thrift store closeout into the stuff of NASA collectors' legends when the central Florida college students paid 20 cents each for five rare NASA flight suits that experts say could be valued at $5,000 apiece or more.

"They were kind of in a weird corner," Rappa told CBS News. "He (Skylar) pulled them all out at first, then brought the whole handful over to me."

The five blue NASA flight suits, along with a white "control suit," were in the bottom of a plastic bin tucked under some forgotten winter sweaters.

According to experts at the American Space Museum, the astronauts' names and flight dates on the white labels seem to match the time astronauts George "Pinky" Nelson, PhD, Robert A. Parker, PhD, and Charles D. Walker, a payload specialist, flew shuttle missions between 1983 and 1985.

At first, experts thought Nelson's flight suit, a 38 small, was worn by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, but further investigation showed Senator Nelson didn't fly a shuttle mission until 1986.

Rappa, a junior at UCF studying astrophysics, told CBS News she has always been fascinated with space travel and would love to be part of the MARS mission.

When the 20-year-old looked at the suits close up, she says, her "jaw dropped."

Ashworth, 24, who was recently accepted into a college aerospace program at Eastern Florida State College, told CBS News the space program is in his family DNA.

"My parents worked NASA communications with the shuttle program," he said, "and my grandfather even worked communications with the shuttle."

"It just blows my mind," Ashworth said, "It (the bin holding the suits) was under two other big totes, I moved them off to the side and I'm digging through a whole bunch of sweaters and stuff, and I found the white one with the patch just kind of laying there."

Chuck Jeffrey, a member of the board the American Space Museum in Titusville, and an avid NASA collector, purchased the fifth flight suit worn by STS-9 Astronaut Dr. Owen Garriot. Garriot, an amateur ham radio operator, is known as the first man in space to communicate via ham radio with people across the globe while aboard the Columbia STS-9.

The students plan to offer the suits at a special auction conducted by the American Space Museum. It has been tentatively scheduled for Nov. 4.

Some of the proceeds will be donated to the museum, while the other funds will be used for Rappa and Ashworth's college tuition.