Toulouse is France’s centre for aviation and aerospace.  So it was off to Cite de l’Espace, to learn more about Europe’s role in the space industry. Unwisely, we left Captain Kumamon in charge of the ice creams.

Set out similarly to Kennedy Space Centre, but much smaller, Cite de l’Espace features a range of indoor and outdoor exhibits.  Almost all are replicas, but they are accurately made.  The information is in French, English and Spanish, so we learned how to say “The Eagle Has Landed” in two other languages.

The main attractions are the Ariane 5 rocket and side boosters, the Mir space station that you can walk through, the Soyuz spacecraft, and an excellent replica of the Apollo 11 lunar module.  There was plenty to keep us occupied, including another moon rock (but you can’t touch this one).

We saw a show about the night sky in the Planetarium, mostly so we could sit down for a while inside an air conditioned building.  The presentation was in French so we didn’t have much idea of the content, but the visuals were mesmerising and relaxing.

The most entertaining show was the Mars lunar rover presentation.  Again using high quality scale replicas, the capabilities of Perseverance (US), and the older Zhurong (Chinese) rovers, and Ingenuity, the first extraterrestrial helicopter, were demonstrated. Again we had little idea of what the presenters were saying, but we got the gist, and the crowd enjoyed it. We’ve only ever seen static displays of these amazing vehicles.

All in all we filled in the day quite easily.  However it remains to be seen whether the European space industry survives the domination of Spacex.