Hyde Park Middle School students Michael Washington, 11, and Christina Kuzma, 12, study on a mock space shuttle in the school's gym Tuesday. Eight students are to spend three days in the shuttle learning about moon rocks and space. Photo by John Locher. Hyde Park Middle School student Emily Bucy, 12, exercises at the physical education station inside the mock shuttle shortly after "launch." The students switch stations every 30 minutes. Photo by John Locher.

The bleachers inside the Hyde Park Middle School gym overflowed with students, teachers and parents for the launch Tuesday.

The band played. So did the orchestra.

The choir sang.

Then came the countdown: five, four, three, two, one, blast off.

From that moment until Thursday afternoon, six sixth-graders and two seventh-graders, members of the school's Lunar Shuttle Club, will be "in space," inside the plywood and cardboard shuttle replica they built on the stage of the gym.

"We've been working for three months to develop a simulation where the kids can behave like astronauts for three days on a simulated actual mission, without leaving the ground, of course," said Fred Goerisch, a science teacher at the magnet school.

Even though they could see the stage curtains above the 36-foot-long and 20-foot-wide structure, the students apparently had no problem envisioning an outer-space adventure.

But it's not all imagination. While aboard the shuttle, they'll complete various space programs on computers, work out, sleep, eat, do their homework for other classes and examine moon rocks.

The primary goal for the shuttle crew is to learn everything about those rocks, which Goerisch obtained from NASA.

But the long days in their spacecraft, which begin at 5 a.m. and last until 10 p.m., are also about life lessons Goerisch has tried to instill each of the three previous times he's conducted this shuttle project in past years.

Among those lessons are that it takes a team of people to accomplish anything great, that the more you put into something, the more you get out, and that people can accomplish anything if they work hard enough, he said.

The shuttle's commander, 13-year-old Patrin Alquisada, meets visitors in the air lock, the small compartment covered with sheets inside the shuttle that replicates an airtight compartment with adjustable air pressure between space, where there's zero pressure, and the shuttle.

He makes guests wait in the confined space for five seconds to assimilate to the cabin pressure.

"I try imagining myself as actually being in the shuttle. I mean, it is a simulated mission," he said.

He also keeps the seven officers aboard on task.

And he's never spent a night from home.

"I'm kind of inexperienced about the away-from-home thing," Alquisada said. "But I'm not really worried because I'm sure we're secure in here."

The students have uniforms. They designed their logos, which include the club's slogan: "Think outside the stars." They have a mission statement.

But they do not have bathrooms. Two portable toilets arrived on campus Monday but didn't fit on the stage.

"So, we're going to have to do some moonwalks when we go to the bathroom," Goerisch said. "But that's OK. That's what astronauts have to do."

At 10:30 p.m. today, they'll take another walk through space.

"We're going to go to the teacher's lounge and take a sponge bath as Mr. Goerisch calls it," said 11-year-old Jordan Agers Mergenthaler, the mission's nutrition officer.

It's not so much a shower as it is a chance to change into clean clothes, he explains.

Agers Mergenthaler cooks the meals including breakfast: a choice of waffles or cereal; lunch: sandwich or soup; and dinner: MREs, (Meals-Ready-to-Eat, sent by the U.S. Army) and stew.

The students, who rotate among eight different stations every 30 minutes, will work out at one of the stations four to five times a day, using weights, a jump rope and an exercise ball, said 12-year-old Emily Bucy, the physical education officer.

"They don't stay healthy if they don't work out," she said.

Cody Scheppmann, the 12-year-old officer of education, makes sure each student does homework from other classes at his station.

For Scheppmann, the shuttle mission is on-the-job training. He wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.

"That's what I'm working out with this, trying to get experience," he said.

The nursing officer, Christina Kuzma, the daughter of school Principal John Kuzma, will check everyone's temperature, pulse and blood pressure about three-times, daily, in case people get nervous and their vitals change, she said.

"Since we're not allowed really to go outside of the space shuttle, it feels like we're in space," she said.

As the curtain opens from the air lock, the behind-the-scenes of the shuttle are surreal, with the red aura of a stage light glowing upon eight students in navy jumpsuits hard at work.

But the Hyde Park gym class playing hoops outside the shuttle, is a quick reminder this is still a school.

"The world goes on even though we're in outer space," Goerisch said. "The world goes on."