Firm Makes Education Entertaining : Science: Company that began creating miniatures for movies now builds full-scale replicas of space modules that can make learning more exciting.

Eagerly, if a bit nervously, the six passengers clamber into the nose cone of the space shuttle Discovery. Mission Control welcomes them aboard as they fasten their seat belts. A monitor shows the outside view of the shuttle, mounted nose up and piggyback atop the huge rocket that will blast them into space.

With a roar of the powerful motors, the seats tilt sharply back as the shuttle thrusts through clouds, visible for only seconds before giving way to blackness and pinpoints of stars. A steep roll makes some passengers grip the edge of their seats. The rockets separate with a jolt, and the shuttle hurtles on at an orbital velocity of 17,000 m.p.h., 250 miles above Earth. The moon glimmers through the right window.

With another jarring maneuver, the engines reverse and the shuttle flies backward to brake its progress and return to Earth.

Red flames lick the windows as the friction of re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere produces intense heat and vibration. The air base pops into view, and the shuttle bucks before the final, soft landing jolt.

Grinning delightedly, the space travelers step out into the desert sunshine . . . no, wait, this isn’t Edwards Air Force Base, it’s a warehouse in Canoga Park. And this isn’t a real shuttle, but a 30-foot-long mock-up created by WonderWorks, a small company that in two decades has grown both figuratively and literally from making miniature props for movies, television and commercials to making full-scale replicas of space modules.

Unfortunately, the “shuttle’s” stay in Canoga Park was brief--just long enough for the shuttle to be built and tested. In October it was shipped to its permanent home in a children’s museum in Venezuela. Although WonderWorks has been making full-size and miniature space mock-ups for more than a decade for NASA and shuttle contractor Rockwell International, among others, this shuttle was part of a $1.7-million project for the Museo de los Ninos in Caracas, Venezuela.

The shuttle is the piece de resistance of an exhibit that includes enough hands-on equipment to make San Fernando Valley moms and dads whine, “Where can our kids do this?”

The shuttle nose cone is nearly exact size--only the seats are smaller to accommodate children, and it is wheelchair accessible. The control panels have toggle switches and knobs that children can fiddle with, and the craft is built with off-the-shelf technology and can be broken down and shipped in one crate.

The museum in Caracas is also getting a WonderWorks Viking lander model that youngsters manipulate by turning handles to make its cameras move or by using a mechanical arm to take soil “samples.” In the model of the Apollo 11, young astronauts put on spacesuits, climb out the lunar lander door and, through use of a pulley system, get a sense of weightlessness while they bounce around on the “moon.”

There is also a giant telescope and a command post where youngsters can put the Apollo Command Module into a mock lunar orbit.

“There is nothing the kids can’t touch in the whole museum,” said WonderWorks General Manager John Palmer. “They can touch, see, feel, hear. We want to hit every sensation. We wanted to give them the whole experience so they know they were on a space shuttle. Education should be exciting.”

Getting students involved is the best way to teach about space exploration, agreed company founder and President Brick Price.

“If I was teaching a child carpentry, I wouldn’t just show him a how-to video,” Price said. “I’d give him a hammer and saw and let him learn how it’s done. If we just showed children a six-minute film of the space shuttle, they’d doze off. But adding the motion, making them feel the flight, adds interest.”

During the 18 months it took to build this equipment, WonderWorks had its own “experts” test the units. Friends, neighbors, relatives, sometimes teachers were invited to bring their youngsters to the Canoga Park warehouse for a “test flight.”

“Letting kids play with everything was part of our testing,” said Palmer. “We just turn ‘em loose. They’d climb on top of the Apollo capsule, touch all the buttons, wiggle the joy stick. It had to pass the kid test.

“I’d love to fabricate thousands of fiberglass Explorer models and put them in public parks as jungle gyms. . . ,” Palmer said. “We need to do something to encourage students in science.”

The company has built shuttle mock-ups for museums and exhibits around the world, including the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, as well as other space paraphernalia for NASA’s Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

WonderWorks also does work for former astronaut Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, building models of space stations that he has designed and wants to see built in outer space. “It’s great to build a space capsule and be able to ask a question of the man who flew it,” Palmer said. Aldrin, in turn, said he thinks WonderWorks is making a valuable contribution to space education. “They are doing wonderful and creative things for the space business,” said Aldrin, who was the second man after Neil Armstrong to walk on the moon.

The company’s sights have grown since it began as Movie Miniatures, which Price, a commercial photographer by trade, started nearly 25 years ago because he didn’t like the quality of the miniature models he was hired to shoot.

Price, who has written 36 how-to books, mostly on model building, has been tinkering since he was a boy. His father taught physics at Caltech and his mother worked as a Disney animator. When Price was 14, he won a model-building contest for the Revel company and was hired to build the models shown on the kit boxes.

In 1975, Movie Miniatures provided more than 1,200 props, including wrist communicators, Klingon weapons and even the Starship Enterprise for “Star Trek, The Motion Picture.” Business skyrocketed faster than warp speed.

Many of WonderWorks’ 25 employees are specialists, such as the paint expert who can match the most delicate hues, or the jewelry maker who can etch the tiniest emblems.

Other credits range from movies such as “The Abyss” (80% of the wet models used, including an oil derrick and submarine), and the movie “SpaceCamp” (the life-size deck and mid deck yawed so realistically that astronaut Sally Ride pronounced them better than the real training module), to singer Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” video and tour and her brother Michael’s videos “Captain EO” and “Moonwalker.” Television credits include the miniseries “Space,” “Amazing Stories” and “Columbo.”

“Movie stuff is our bread-and-butter,” Price said. But Palmer noted that as the call for larger space models grew, they dropped Movie Miniatures in favor of the name WonderWorks in 1984.

Miniature versions of such things as houses and airplanes are used to fool the eye. For example, an 18-inch statue of Michael Jackson can be filmed or photographed to look like an 18-foot-tall monument, as was done in “Captain EO.” The secret, confided Price, is in the special camera lenses he developed that marry a small-scale model with a full-size background. For example, a small replica of a mansion used in the movie “Christmas Vacation” was built and mounted on a pallet-like structure. The model is then “floated” in front of local mountains. When shot with special lenses, the two seem in perfect proportion. “The camera is a one-eyed idiot,” Price said. “You just have to fool its depth perception.”

The process can also make large objects appear small, Price said. For example, it can make a person appear small enough to sit on the head of a pin.

“What we’re doing today is really nothing new,” Price said. “We simply took an old process and brought it into the ‘90s with better film, better lights, better lenses.”

All this razzmatazz has wider applications, Palmer and Price agreed. They want to wed the magic of movies to education.

“Education and entertainment are coming together at light speed,” said Palmer, whose resume has included marketing private schools and a stint as associate director of admissions at the University of Southern California.

“What we want to do,” added Price, “is to bring entertainment value back to education.”