A Disneyland for Spaceuropeans

If you read this blog it means you are passionate about space (or you'll soon be; I mean, who can resist my dazzling prose, right?). Very well, in that case wouldn't you just love to visit a theme park dedicated to our passion? A park with rockets, planets and satellites all around, where you could wander for hours, learn and dream, leaving behind our ordinary Earthling lives?

I have good news for you: such a park exists already! Even better, there's more than one, but the one I want to talk about today is the Cité de l'Espace (the City of Space) in Toulouse, southwestern France.

Toulouse is a very important centre for aeronautics and space research (just think of Airbus), which made it an obvious choice for the Cité de l'espace, opened to visitors in 1997. What you can see in the picture is the main building, hosting several permanent and temporary exhibitions, a planetarium and the usual tourist accessories like a souvenir shop and a restaurant.

Inside you can, among other things, fly the Space Shuttle, look at the astronauts inside the International Space Station, walk on a giant satellite image of Toulouse and coordinate a peacekeeping mission aided by advanced Earth-monitoring satellites.

The picture also shows a reproduction of the venerable Soyuz spacecraft.

I know, what is probably drawing your attention in this picture is the full size model of the Arian 5 rocket, but we'll come to that in a moment. Now look at the panels on the left. Each of them shows an image taken from this very spot, but on a constantly increasing scale. To be precise, each image covers an area ten times bigger than the previous one. Jumping by powers of ten from a stretch of pavement in the Cité de l'Espace, a couple of pictures later you already see the whole of Toulouse, and then France, Europe, Earth... and before you know it you are glancing at the entire Universe!

And here's Ariane 5, developed over a decade at a cost of seven billion euros. Its first launch in June 1996 turned into an embarrassing failure (not to mention the loss of four satellites of the Cluster mission) due to a trivial software bug. Despite the disastrous début and some problems during subsequent launches, the flagship rocket of ESA has since then sent into orbit dozens of satellites.
In case you are interested, the satellite I am working for at the moment will be launched by the powerful engines of an Ariane 5.

Ariane 5 is so photogenic you hardly can take your camera off it. At the top of the rocket you can see the logos of the Cité de l'Espace and, below, of Arianespace, the company responsible for developing and operating the Ariane family of rockets. On the side boosters, together with the ESA logo, the flags of its member countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Note that since this rocket was painted five more countries have joined the family: Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and United Kingdom.
Finally, at the bottom you can see the logo of CNES (Centre Nationale d'Études Spatiales), the French space agency.

A model of the Solar System, with Jupiter in the foreground, Saturn behind it and Neptune further back. But what's that huge Earth doing over there? Maybe a terrible mistake by whoever designed the model? Don't worry, it's just another attraction, the Terr@dome.

The Terr@dome, we were saying. Inside it you can enjoy a fifteen-minute tale about the origin and evolution of our planet.

A full scale model of the beloved MIR space station (which, I'm sure you know, burned in the atmosphere on 23 March 2001). You can see two modules: Квант (Kvant, "quantum" as in quantum mechanics) and Кристалл (Kristall).

This is the Soyuz spacecraft, old and reliable product of the USSR, first developed in the heroic years when the Moon race still had no clear winner. In its latest incarnations it has been invaluable to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, especially given the well-known difficulties of the Space Shuttle programme.

And this would be me, ready for launch inside a Soyuz module, with an astronaut friend on my left. Note that there's still a vacant seat on my right. That's right, the tiny capsule can accommodate three people, crammed like in the humblest old crock, complete with a teddy bear hanging from the "windshield".
What's worse is that to reach your destination, for example the International Space Station, you'll have to stay there for a couple of days. Space exploration is not just about adventure and heroism, but also pious endurance.

Last but not least, the European XMM-Newton satellite (XMM stands for X-ray Multi-Mirror), built to observe the sky at the wavelength of X-ray radiation. Weighing almost four tonnes, it was launched in 1999 by an Ariane 5 rocket (in case you are confused, the one you see in the picture is not the original). In the picture below you can see the three X-ray telescopes, built by the Italian company Media Lario. Each telescope is made of 58 concentric mirrors (hence the Multi-Mirror).

This is the end of our visit to the Cité de l'Espace. I hope you liked it and strongly encourage you to experience it first-hand. You'll have the opportunity to get to know a wonderful city like Toulouse, in which I was so lucky to live, alas for just ten months. You'll no doubt marvel at its art, its history and its outstanding cuisine. But above all, a visit to the Cité de l'Espace will remind you of the extraordinary things we Earthlings can do when we join our forces.

All the pictures in this post are by the author