Olivier Sender

Review of CITE DE L'ESPACE

It is high time that the city of Toulouse gives a ...

It is high time that the city of Toulouse gives a big, but then a very big, youthful look at the facilities of the city of space. For such a place, to present such an obsolete in the facilities as in the presentation, is very disappointing. You have more technological content at home or in your pocket ... The video projections in the stellarium are deplorable: the video projection has made such progress for 10 years that we remain stunned by the poor quality and extremely low brightness of the content presented. The stars are blurry, appear in duplicate, it is an incredible heat, the animation is totally outdated short, fun for the little ones because the characters and history are nice, but otherwise really no interest. The presentations in the "space shuttle" under Ariane6 with video-projections of images of another century are also hard to see. Many facilities are out of order or really from another age. The Planetarium, beside the rest, is not bad, but far from extraordinary. We remain on our hunger when the visual quality, and some approximations in the presentation leave something to be desired. Put "1- the sun" in the answer choices to the question: "Which planet is the hottest solar system?" leave him speechless, in a place that does not mean to make that kind of mistake. Then explain to the children who saw that the sun is not a planet!
And the height, one of the few recent and interesting pieces, a copy of the Curiosity rover, a technological gem and exploit of space exploration, which accomplishes a fantastic epic on Mars, is stupidly exposed between the snack and the entrance of the toilets in the access hall to the planetarium and imax 2D (!).
Let's move on to the presence of the Mir station, certainly a beautiful collector's item that has its place here in terms of space history, but that dates seriously and that would benefit from being assisted by a copy of a part of the ISS at least ...
It is incomprehensible that a site that wants a showcase for Toulouse is thus left abandoned, especially given the price of the entry. Do something !

Addition second visit July 2019 (nocturnal): exhibition "Moon" under the welcome and very well done, to see!
A space module (lunar?) Took the place of the plant labyrinth outside, but did not have time to go see it.
"Mapping" on Ariane: disappointment. The idea is good, it starts well and then ... it's over. Too short, we remain on his hunger.
Better impression than at the first visit.