Space Age Lessons for Students : Science: Mars colony project opens up a new universe for 200 pupils, introducing them to the possibility of life in outer space.

It is anywhere from 34 million to 249 million miles away, depending on the position of Earth at departure time. There is no air, no water, nothing growing in the dusty reddish craters and canyons that cover its surface.

Nevertheless, 11-year-old David Nelson of San Dimas says of the planet Mars: “I kind of like it up there.”

It would be fun, David said, “to travel out there in a special suit” and explore the place.

For Kylee Wuethrich , a serious sixth-grader from Calle Mayor Middle School in Torrance, fun has nothing to do with why the human race might want to colonize Mars.

“If something happens to Earth, and we’re killing it now, we’d have some place to go,” declared Kylee.

David and Kylee were among 200 youngsters from around the Southland who built Marsville, a cosmic village of interlocking plastic bubbles that sprung up last week in a gymnasium at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Marsville culminated a two-month learning exercise designed by the Challenger Center in Washington to introduce schoolchildren to the possibility of life in outer space.

“Dust storms and volcanoes,” said Christy Dismukes, an 11-year-old from San Dimas musing about day-to-day-life on Mars. “Some people say there used to be water.”

“No pollution,” added 11-year-old Crystal Fukumoto of Torrance, looking on the brighter side of life on Mars.

Founded in memory of the astronaut crew that died when its craft exploded in flight, the Challenger Center trained teachers to conduct the Marsville project, which is expected to become an annual event for groups of schoolchildren across the country.

The students came from 13 schools in three school districts: Torrance, Hemet and Bonita. With names such as the Lunar Lunatics and the Martian Marauders, the fifth- to eighth-graders set to work early in the morning with gray electrical tape to put together their nine plastic habitats, as they called their living spaces.

Modeled on the work systems pioneered by America’s high-tech corporations, the youngsters worked in separate groups during the preliminary stages of creating the habitats. Each group came from a different school.

“These kids have never seen each other,” said Steve Jarvis, one of the early organizers of the Marsville project. Jarvis’ brother, Gregory, was among the Challenger astronauts who died when the craft exploded on liftoff.

“They’ve been communicating by phone, fax and hook or crook, any way they could,” said Jarvis, an executive at TRW, which along with Rockwell International helps support the center and the Marsville project.

In each habitat, one work group made the ceiling and the floor, another made two sides of the habitat and a third made the other two sides and a door. Common household fans provided air to keep the habitats inflated.

The curriculum also called for the students to devise systems for providing each Marsville habitat with air, water, food, recreation and waste management.

“We’re going to bring animals, like cows and chickens, a pig and a goat,” said Issica Baron of Hickory Elementary School in Torrance, a member of her habitat’s food committee.

“And for water we’re going to melt (Mars’) polar ice cap,” Issica said.

Cora Salvail, 11, of Hemet, popped open her habitat’s recreation cache--a box filled with playing cards, a jump rope, an inflatable beach ball and a book on games, circa 1935, given to Cora by her grandmother.

Once they finished putting up their habitats, which took about 2 1/2 hours, the students crowded inside them to munch on their regulation 22-ounce lunches and drink their maximum 10-ounce drinks. They had packed the lunches tightly together the day before, first eliminating all unnecessary packaging.

It was left to 10-year-old Jimmy Woolen of San Dimas to bring everybody down to earth.

“My banana is all squished,” Jimmy cried.