Leicester, National Space Centre Review

Overall Rating

Well sign posted.
Staff appeared friendly.
Good sized car park facilities.

Expensive.
Car Park charge of £1 per day.
Lacking in content.
Lack of interactive exhibits.
Local environment was unpleasant.
On-site shop had limited stock and not exactly cheap.

Thursday 15th Feb 2007. Our first attempt to visit the UK National Space Centre ended in utter disaster. The M1 was closed, the M18 was closed and frankly the A1 was completely fouled up. We ended up being trapped in the services at the Blyth roundabout. We went home and resolved to try again the next day.

Friday. We left early, used the A1 and got to the National Space Centre in a little over 2 hours. Unfortunately, so had everyone else! The first car park was full but the overflow car park was reasonably empty. We parked up and then paid the £1 parking fee. Whilst paying for the ticket a gentleman, with family in tow, approached me and offered me his parking ticket, while loudly complaining about the huge queue to get into the National Space Centre. I politely declined but was a little disconcerted. We hadn't even got to the main building and people were complaining already.

So we strode manfully, that's me and my 8 year old son, to approach the UK National Space Centre hoping for a day of excitement, stimulation and plain fun!

What we got was a massive queue of people that seemed to be moving slightly slower than an arthritic slug. To be fair, staff appeared very quickly and began to organise the queue and bring it underneath a covered area to protect the punters from the rather inclement weather. This was a definite departure from most UK venues and I think their efforts were worthy of praise and thanks! Otherwise, we and many others, would have been pretty well soaked before we got anywhere near the entrance. We spent about 45-50 minutes in the queue.

Once we got inside we were corralled and channelled to the payment counters. There we were relieved of £20. £11 per adult and £9 per child. Ouch! We were able to pay using debit/credit card or cash. There was also the now ubiquitous encouragement to sign up for gift aid and the offer of a glossy souvenir brochure which I believe retailed for the hefty price of £5. We declined that kind offer.

At this point we would have sampled the bill of fare offered by the on site catering. Unfortunately, all that seemed on offer were prepackaged sandwiches, candy, cold and hot drinks, which was not what we were looking for. Plus the queue for this basic provender was pretty off putting. I settled for buying my son a pineapple juice carton (70p) and a Kitkat (55p) from a vending machine. Again, we had to queue up for this but only for a few minutes.

Thus armed, we entered the exhibition area by showing our tickets, bar-code reader based system which the staff member said that, it sometimes doesn't work, and were immediately underwhelmed by what we found.

My own instant impression was that there were too many static displays and when I say static I mean both not moving, not interactive and not able to move me or interest me. My son was of the same opinion. His first comment being, it's a bit boring.

We explored the ground floor area and found some exhibits of interest. A FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) camera set-up where a person could see a thermal radiation image of themselves. A glass sphere, that could be rotated to emulate weather patterns, which I've seen elsewhere. My son found this pretty interesting. There was a section called Tranquility Base but the queue was such that my son refused point blank to do any more queuing and I couldn't blame him. My son did find a mock up of a rocket that we had to put together and he had a few minutes fun doing it, until he realised that it wouldn't stay up and fell over as soon as either of us let go of it.

At this point I should say that many of the genuine space exhibits seemed to be Russian in origin. In the entrance area was a Soyuz capsule, previously exhibited outside a building in Georgia. The space suit and inner suit with underwear, were all Russian. I didn't see any modern or old American space equipment. I suspect that the UK National Space Centre is very much a poor relation to places like the Science Museum in London.

Other so-called highlights of the ground floor did include an exhibit that allowed the punters to touch the remains of an iron meteorite. My son liked that. There was also an opportunity to experience the difference between iron meteorites and stony meteorites. Again my son quite liked that. Nothing else on the ground floor got his, or my, thumbs up.

We tried the first floor, accessible by either stairs or a lift. There we found a water rocket exhibit that was very popular with the kids. In fact I think it was one of the most popular exhibits we saw that day. It was basically a pair of plastic rocket bodies that fill with water (the amount controlled by the computer displays set in front of the rockets) and then they fly upwards after a short 5 second countdown. On the day we visited only one of the rockets was actually working. Strangely enough there was a queue. My son was of the opinion that this was the best thing he saw all day.

In the same area was an exhibit that sought to represent gravity wells associated with planets. It did this by allowing the punters to roll metal balls across a flat surface with three holes, representing the Earth, the Moon and what I think was meant to be Jupiter, but it had obviously seen a great deal of wear and didn't really work too well. There was also a flat topped exhibit that was an air hockey game but instead of playing air hockey the exhibit was meant to demonstrate some of Newtons laws of motion. To do this we were provided with plastic air hoses that the punter was meant to use to move a black plastic puck around. The air pressure was pretty low so the exhibit didn't really work. In fact a lady picked up one of the air hoses and the end came off in her hand!

After exploring the first level we then proceeded, via the lift, to the top floor. Here was a rather disappointing collection entitled satellite zoo. Yes, there were some satellites hanging from the ceiling and a kind of multiple satellite launching system. I'm afraid to say that it was very disappointing. Thumbs down from the boy. In fact he got more fun from the lift journey to the top.

Then we took the lift to engineering. Here we were once more treated to what I could only call weak exhibits. Including a large empty plastic box.

There was a shop selling a limited range of science based products and the usual tawdry mementos. My son found it rather difficult to find anything he wanted.

Overall, I found the UK National Space Centre to be expensive, sparse in content and a typical committee type project. I'd heartily recommend the Science Museum in London. I think it's more of a corporate event location rather than a place to inspire the young.

Members' Comments onAngryShopper's Review

• Anonymous101 on 19th Feb 2007

  These places do seem more intent on charging as much money as possible rather than entertaining and provided good wholesome knowledgeable family fun. To be honest, I would still visit, if I lived a little closer, but would certainly heed your warnings about the fiscal dangers of visiting the National Space Centre.