For as long as he can remember Lucas Hawkins has been fascinated by space.

Maybe it was an early fascination with airplanes and wanting to know how they worked. Maybe it was watching "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" with his dad.

"While I was studying airplanes, the person who was helping me study showed me a little something of SpaceX," the soon-to-be-eighth grader at Sandpoint Charter School said. "And then I was like, I need to learn about this, I need to go on this, I need to do this. And so I started researching that and then I just got really, really into it."

Seeing their son's interest, Doug and Stephanie Hawkins learned about Space Camp, an educational camp in Huntsville, Alabama, that gives students a chance to experience life as an astronaut and learn about space. They soon decided that the camp would be the perfect birthday gift for Lucas.

Originally planned for last year, the trip was delayed by a year by the pandemic when Space Camp canceled visits in 2020. The camp features a variety of programs, immersing students into a week of space, going on mock missions, launching their own rockets, and learning what it is like to live and work as an astronaut.

Located at the home of the original NASA headquarters, the camp was non-stop for the week-long visit, Lucas said.

Among the highlights was getting to train on the multi-axis trainer, a chair of three separate weighted rings, all spinning in different directions. The MAT is designed to simulate an out-of-control airplane or spacecraft trapped in a tumble roll.

"Basically you have to control it and steady it using the least amount of fuel possible," Hawkins said. "So year, it was a lot of fun."

In one of the team activities, Lucas said they were tasked with building a heat shield using either copper or aluminum foil. The goal was to keep a screw attached to piece of wood from falling for as long as possible. While many of the teams used copper, Lucas said his knowledge of magnets had him suggesting his team use aluminum foil instead and create air pockets to distribute the heat.

Many of the shields lasted about 40 seconds, while the shortest time was about 16 seconds. Lucas said his team's shield lasted for a minute and 40 seconds.

"The problem with ours though, is we had a bit of a mishap while trying to connect the shield to the screw," he said. "So the screw was touching the shield, which was drawing in heat towards the hot glue, otherwise would have lasted a lot longer."

In the Space Academy category of camp, the one that Lucas took part in, students get to go on missions, either working as members of a crew or those at mission control. In some of the missions, the students take part in a mission where they are aboard the space station or living in a Mars-like habitat.

On one mission, Lucas said he was able to conduct experiments to see how plants would react to the gravity on Mars and on another he was a scientist charged with making a kind of glue out of two basic elements.

"Then we had these things called anomalies, where if we didn't take care of them fast, the mission would be scrubbed, aka aborted, and we'd have failed," Lucas said. "So we had to keep saying, 'Houston, we have a problem.' It was mandatory."

Every time the team ran into a problem, Hawkins said those at the artificial Houston had to search for answers on how to handle specific anomalies, such as the oxygen disappearing or the batteries failing.

During another part of camp, Lucas said he served as a mission specialist, "making sure that the shuttle doesn't explode on the way home."

"Which I'd have to say is pretty fun," he added.

They learned what it feels like to face G-force pressure and how to handle it. Maneuvering his feet into different positions, Lucas said he learned how to control his body to end up higher and go faster. In the Moon Shot, they got to experience what it feels like to be shot into space.

"When you're at the top, it feels like you don't weigh a thing at all," Lucas said. "You have the feeling that you want to like yell and you give a victory cry. It's amazing, absolutely amazing."

At a visit to a nearby museum, Lucas tried his hand at manually piloting a spacecraft. While it took a while, Lucas said he was finally able to accomplish the difficult task.

"You basically are launched into orbit and you have to do what a computer would normally do and [set] the perfect trajectory to make it to the moon and back," he said. "It took me multiple, multiple tries to get it right, because in real life, it you had to be absolutely perfect to just the chance of doing it which is why they have computers."

Other activities included designing a rocket and their own space station as well as their own rockets.

Another highlight was getting to meet an astronaut. The man finally got to go into space after more than eight applications, starting before he was in college. Finally, when he was 50, Lucas said the astronaut finally got to go into space, fulfilling his dream.

"That's really inspiring for me," he said.

Since returning home, Lucas has been working with his younger brother to build a rocket. At first, they thought to make it a soda rocket but have switched to a chemical-powered one because the other is too inefficient, said Lucas.

His goal is to be a flight engineer, to work on and be on spacecrafts, to be and work in space. He doesn't know why, or when his fascinating began. He just knows that some day, he wants to join the country's other astronauts, to be a part of the space program.

"Maybe it's the fact that there has only been so many people that have actually been to outer space and the fact that I kind of want to add to that list myself," Lucas said. "I guess you could say, I grew kind of an addiction to outer space. Outer space has been kind of like my TV. Honestly, I don't even remember when I first got really, really into it. It's just always been there."

Doug Hawkins, Lucas' father, said he's impressed by how much his son learned and how much was packed into the week-long camp.

"Once he got back, he's been very excited about space-related things so we started watching "From Earth to Moon", which is the Tom Hanks miniseries," he said. "And he's been impressing his mom in particular, because he's telling her what's going to happen next in the episodes, which he's not watched before, he just knows from what he's learned what's going to happen."

Lucas said he got to learn about the universe, which he linked to a candy twisted into a wrapper, with the center of the universe as the candy and the edges as the wrapper as it is twisted open.

"It honestly looks like a candy that has the wrappers spreading out as far as we can physically see, but only into areas in opposite directions in the universe," Lucas said. "And the candy, we're still inside of it. But we're starting to get out there.

His goal is to be a flight engineer, to work on and be on spacecrafts, to be and work in space. He doesn't know why, or when his fascination began. He just knows that some day, he wants to join the country's other astronauts, to be a part of the space program.

"Maybe it's the fact that there has only been so many people that have actually been to outer space and the fact that I kind of want to add to that list myself," Lucas said. "I guess you could say, I grew kind of an addiction to outer space. Outer space has been kind of like my TV. Honestly, I don't even remember when I first got really, really into it. It's just always been there."