Watch kids react as a magical school bus takes them to 'Mars'

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STEM_Students_React_to_Generation_Beyond_Mars_Experience_Bus___Lockheed_Martin:YouTube

Lockheed Martin/YouTube

All aboard then off to Mars.

OK, so full disclosure that this video is a PR stunt by rocket manufacturer Lockheed Martin (the company NASA has contracted to build its spacecraft to Mars).

But it looks like the kids who participated still had a pretty cool experience.

Lockheed Martin loaded some students onto a school bus, and took them to Mars (sort of).

The windows turned into virtual reality screens of the Red Planet. When the bus made a turn, the screens made it look like the bus was making a turn on Mars. 

Watch how excited the kids were:

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mars bus

The idea behind the stunt was to communicate an exciting point: Children in school today could be the first humans to step foot on Mars. NASA plans to get "boots on the ground" in the next 30 years.

But as former NASA astronaut Tony Antonelli, who's now the chief technologist of exploration systems for Lockheed Martin's civil line of space systems, told Tech Insider, there's not a sense of urgency to get to Mars, and the American people aren't convinced that it will happen.

"You talk to school kids, though, and say, 'Hey are we going to explore Mars?' It's not a tricky question for them. It's an easy question," he said. "They know that humans are going to explore Mars. I feel the pressure that I want to make sure that we've done everything we can to enable that. I also haven't given up. I want to see it happen."

Check out the full video:

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