BANGOR – Andy Sandweiss is excited about being a tourist in space.

“I would see all the planets and have lots of fun,” the 5-year-old Bangor resident said Saturday after visiting NASA’s futuristic Starship 2040.

He, along with two classmates from Stillwater Montessori School in Orono, toured the exhibit when it was on display at the Maine Discovery Museum during the weekend. Designed to show what commercial spaceflight might be like 37 years in the future, the exhibit travels throughout the United States inside a 48-foot-long tractor-trailer rig.

Hundreds of area children like Sandweiss and his friends visited the exhibit over the weekend while it was parked behind the Pickering Square parking garage, a short walk from the back door of the museum.

Five-year-old Avery Daniel McCormick of Alton stopped long enough Saturday afternoon to announce that his favorite part of the exhibit was “when I was doing the driving,” before he rushed off to take the helm of the spaceship again.

NASA’s goals for space travel in 2040 are outlined in the exhibit. They include:

. To be able to go anyplace in the solar system anytime, anywhere;

. To make space travel as routine and affordable as today’s airliners;

. To make space travel as safe as commercial air travel is today.

The exhibit answers the questions students ask most often – how do you go to the bathroom and eat in space – according to Derek Wang of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the exhibit is based.

While they can’t test the facilities, a space toilet and sink are inside Starship 2040. On a step below the toilet are two shoe straps to keep users from floating away, and bars similar to those used in today’s handicapped-accessible bathrooms are mounted on either side of the toilet. Toilet paper is not on a roll but dispensed like Kleenex from a slot in the wall.

To use the sink, space travelers in 2040 must insert their hands into a bubble through two sleeves. Inside are two buttons – one for water, the other for hot air to dry hands. Apparently, preheated, premeasured water would be dispensed from a tube for washing, then hands would be air-dried by machines similar to those in many public restrooms today.

Much to the chagrin of McCormick and Sandweiss, the menu does not include fare from their favorite restaurant, McDonald’s. Offerings do include duck, pork, salads, lemonade and espresso, but it was unclear whether they would be served on a plate or in a pouch.

Starship 2040 includes a sleeping compartment that appeared to be almost as cramped as the sleeping berths were in trains 50 years ago.

In another display, an exercise machine similar to today’s Stairmaster sits under a sign on the wall that issues a health warning.

“Our medical staff recommends daily 2.5-hour workout sessions for all those remaining in space more than three days,” it reads. Another warns travelers that “Zero gravity has its own risks. Be mindful of your personal belongings. No free floating, torpedoing or other low gravity acrobatics during weightlessness.”

In addition to those who visited the exhibit this weekend, about 2,500 area schoolchildren are expected to tour it today through Wednesday at Fairmount School in Bangor, according to Ellen Holmes, the fourth-grade teacher who arranged for Starship 2040’s visit to Maine through NASA’s educational programs department.

Holmes began seeking grant money last September to raise the $10,000 it cost to bring Starship 2040 to Bangor. She said that in bringing the program to town, her goal was to raise pupils’ aspirations.

“When I think about the year 2040, most of the students in school now will be working in their professions,” she said Saturday. “I want these kids to understand that they’re part of this future and to think beyond their horizons.”

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about NASA’s goals for space travel as Sandweiss and Holmes are.

“I don’t like going into space but I like studying it a lot,” said Cavan Hagerty, 5, of Bangor, who visited the exhibit Saturday with his friends from Stillwater Montessori.

NASA is betting that by the year 2040, Hagerty will have changed his mind and willingly join his – by then – old friends for a weekend jaunt to the moon.