National Space Centre (with a dusting of snow)!

Well today was a late-ish wake up for breakfast and then a mild rush to get ready to go and pick up Toop, Lauren and Tim to go and see the National Space Centre. The space centre is one of the UK's largest attractions that is purely devoted to space exploration and space in general, the building itself is and interesting 'bubble' design [which turns out is bullet proof, for some odd reason] and stands at an impressive 42m tall. It was built as a joint project by the University of Leicester and the government's millennium commission and is currently used by post doctoral researchers at the uni's space research centre.

 When we had eventually gotten to the centre and had left the packed lunch there. We first wandered around the ground floor, this is aimed at a 11-15 age group and includes interactive displays. Like a reaction test to see 'if you have what it takes to be in space' and a remote controlled mini-rover to move around a Martian surface.
It also includes fact panels on all the planets and all the little neutron stars, black holes, worm holes and other strange aspects of space; some of which we still can't explain.

In the tower the first thing that you see is the bottom of some booster rockets and a large red button that says 'DO NOT TOUCH' [of course we pushed it] and set off a loud but funny launch sequence of dry ice and lighting effects. As you move up the tower you can learn all about the space race of the 50s-70s between the USSR [aka Russia] and the USA during the Cold War. It starts with the Russian side of things [including some rockets and missiles] then moves to the American side and their eventual development of a space program. You can read about the history of the Apollo missions and even 'land' a module on the moon. You can access the tower by either lifts or a staircase, the lifts I cannot guarantee that they will be working so I would recommend the stairs for ensuring that your kids sleep well when they get home.

We had an indoors picnic, prepared by Toop that consisted of Vegan scones, cous cous, carrots, Pringles and drinks. Overall the day was really fun, even though we missed the theatre viewing [which you really should see if you get the chance to visit]. I'll put the link in for you to see the centres homepage. But a very good day out.

http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/Page.aspx/1/HOME/