Not an accurate rendering of the future mock DCPS space station.

Want to train your kids for eventual space travel? Well, you won’t have to go much further than a D.C. public school. The Examiner reports today that D.C. will build a space station simulator in a public school soon:

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray plans to open a space education center, featuring a space station simulator, in the DC Public Schools system, he revealed in his fiscal 2014 budget. Though the so-called Challenger Center for Space Education does not have a designated location, it is expected to include “a two-room simulator that consists of a space station, complete with communications, medical, life and computer science equipment, and a mission control room patterned after NASA’s Johnson Space Center and a space lab ready for exploration,” according to the budget proposal.

It is expected to cost $1.5 million to design, $1 million of which has already been approved in a previous year’s budget. Gray’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal includes the remaining $500,000.

Forty-one such centers exist across the U.S., as well as centers in Canada, Korea and the United Kingdom. Closer to home, Prince George’s County has operated one since 1989, serving mostly sixth-grade students. Students use the centers for scientific experiments, while their classmates watch from “mission control.”

School is soooo much cooler than when we were kids.