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NASA's Educational Game Proposal Deadline Extended
NASA MMO Team writes "Due to the additional time required to respond to the number of questions that were raised during the NASA Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Game RFP Briefing held on April 21, 2008 in Baltimore, MD, we have decided to extend the RFP Proposal response date to Monday, July 21, 2008 at 12:00 midnight EDT. ... Please contact the NASA Learning Technologies Project Office at mmo@nasa.gov with any additional questions." (NASA has set up a site with additional information on the NASA MMO Education Game project, too.)
Given the "realistic" requirements, an EvE game (minus the PeeVeePee, since that would be unpalatable to the Gov.) wouldn't work.
What you can imagine is however a kind of simulation of some "near future" solar system. Kids (since that's aimed at kids and youngsters, remember) can pursue all kind of professions, and navigate around the system up to the Oort Cloud, specialise in pseudo-engineering (improving efficiency of designs of all kind of modular stuff), space industry (production of the aforementioned designs), research (producing tech data that is used in those engineering), and so on. You build with your buddies (guild/school/whatever) your own outpost, try to make it attractive. Regular competitions and the best offering gets to host a Big Contract (your plutonian geosynchronous station got selected to host the Andromeda High Resolution Telescope) to increase your notoriety.
But yes, there's a couple elements - only a couple - from EvE that could work.