HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) _ Fewercommanders are on hand at mission control to guide space shuttle adventures. Adwindling number of explorers float in the simulated weightlessness of outerspace or dress in bulky, white astronaut suits.

Those T-shirts of the 1980s proclaiming``I spent the night in space'' have disappeared.

Space Camp, once a star program wherechildren could learn and live like astronauts, has fallen on hard times.

Red ink runs into the millions ofdollars. Loans are in default. Jobs are cut. And the former director of theorganization that runs the camp, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, has beensued by the state for $7.5 million.

Adding to Space Camp's woes: AfterSept. 11, fewer people were willing to put their children in airplanes andtravel from out-of-state to the youth camps.

Despite the problems, Space Camp pickedup business over the holidays with discount rates. And officials say they'recautiously optimistic that parents will let kids children fly again and enjoythe camp's rocket-pack simulators, mock mission control, moon walk machine andneutral-buoyancy water tank.

``There's probably some additional paincoming, but we'll get through it. Space Camp is too good of a program,'' saidLarry Capps, executive director of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

Last year, about 12,000 childrenattended Space Camp sessions, most of which run for a week, down from 18,000 in1998. Still, the 388,000 visitors who stopped in last year to look at therockets and other attractions were enough to keep it Alabama's No. 1 touristattraction.

Capps said the Space Camps in Floridaand California have also endured hard times and are facing the consequences ofyears of mismanagement, poor advertising and unfulfilled dreams.

Space Camp in Mountain View, Calif.,closed its doors Jan. 6. Space Camp in Florida is selling the Astronaut Hall ofFame at Titusville to Delaware North, the company that runs concessions for theKennedy Space Center.

Huntsville's Space Camp started in 1982and prospered through the early 1990s with the popularity of the space shuttle.

But problems arose when money fromsupposed corporate backers never materialized for a program, conceived bythen-director Mike Wing, that let fifth-grade students attend camp for free.The idea was that those students would spread Space Camp's popularity, andperhaps come back themselves as paying customers in later years.

Amid the red ink, the marketing staffwas axed and word-of-mouth between schoolchildren stopped.

Alabama, in a state lawsuit, lays theblame at the feet of Wing, who, under pressure, resigned as director of theU.S. Space & Rocket Center in September 1999, leaving more than $4 millionin debt. Most of his management team resigned at Gov. Don Siegelman's requestor were fired when they resisted Siegelman's pledge to revamp the board.

Wing, now a baseball coach atLeTourneau University in Texas, was not available for comment on this story.

The lawsuit claims Wing owes $4.5million in losses from tuition and travel for the fifth-grader program, and $3million in NASA education grants for the same purpose. Auditors said Wingcommitted fraud against the state and misused state money.

Last year, when state auditors said heshould pay back $7.5 million, he denied owing the program anything.

``There was no personal gain here. Thiswas to serve kids,'' he told The Huntsville Times.

Members of the revamped Space Centerboard want to replenish the program's bank accounts. The Space Camp Foundation,a separate organization that manages the out-of-state programs, still runsspace camps in Florida, Japan, Canada, Turkey and Belgium.

``When you end one fiscal year with a$74,000 debt and the next year you've got an unaudited deficit of $2.8 million,when your camp attendance is down and you've got significant debt from thefoundation that it cannot pay ... these are clear signals you need to go inanother direction,'' said Mary Jane Caylor, chairwoman of the Alabama SpaceScience Exhibit Commission, which oversees the Huntsville-based Space Center.

The California camp now faces $13million in debt and needs $1.5 million to $2 million to reopen the camp, Cappssaid. Its financial burden has continued to climb in recent years as attendancefell off and additional accounting problems were revealed.

The reopening could happen as soon asMay. Two companies and a private investor are interested in reviving the camp,said Julio Valencia, who was director of the California program and now runsthe Committee to Save Space Camp.