A man with a beard and a baggy jumper is about to start selling visits to space for £100,000. For those who feel that this is an excessive amount to pay for a few minutes of weightlessness and a good view of the oceans - with the added risk of disappearing altogether like Steve Fossett - there is an alternative.

For a fraction of the price and a 90-minute flight from London to Toulouse on a conventional aircraft, you can enjoy all the delights of the solar system, weightlessness and even the Mir space station. And you can take your children.

It is this final news that might put some people off: for me going anywhere with my children, particularly to a theme park, is the final frontier, one that I have no desire to cross. But there is a lot to be said for the Cité de l'Espace. For a start you can park right outside. If you go early enough in the morning, there are few people about because the French are still having a good breakfast or planning where to go for lunch.

The day we visited there were no queues and the children were soon enrolled on a course to learn how to become astronauts, with a questionnaire to complete and the promise of a prize if they were successful. They began exploring Mars - four-year-old Leo in a go-kart, while his older sisters were put in a transparent ball like a giant snowball that they moved under their own steam.

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A handsome young astronaut explained that it was important to work together as a team, as you would in space. We watched them trundle down the track until they reached the first obstacle, at which point they pushed in different directions and had to be rescued.

“This is my best day ever,” said eight-year-old Olivia. For the first time in living memory her sister Bea agreed with her.

The next lesson was how to eat in space. The trainee astronauts were taken into a kitchen and shown how to make hot chocolate in a plastic bag. This being France, it was then time for lunch. I have always thought that it would be difficult to eat well in space, but I had no idea that it would be quite this difficult.

The Astronaut's Café would not make it into my Gourmet Guide to the Galaxy. I was hoping to have Space Dust, but our lunch had a distinctly French feel - salmon paté and Toulouse sausages, steak haché for the children - and was unmemorable, although the wine, a local Gaillac, was quite drinkable. It was reassuring to know that you can get wine in French space, although the chef should be cast into outer darkness.

The afternoon's activities included firing water-filled rockets, visiting two children's play areas where the parents were able to enjoy a short siesta, a trip to the Mir space station - awfully cramped, it's curious that to go to infinity you have to cram yourself into a tin can the size of a VW Beetle - and even the chance to sit in a Soyuz space capsule.

What the Cité de l'Espace does really well is to cater for all ages. It does not dumb down: the children are encouraged to learn and the parents pick up some information on the way. In the planetarium we saw an earnest film about the Egyptians and the stars - I managed to drag everybody out before my wife fell asleep - and then, possibly the highlight, we went to see an IMAX film on life in the international space station.

If you have never witnessed a 3-D film, it is worth going there for that experience alone. You feel that you can reach out and touch the astronauts, although since you have just learnt that they have little water to wash in, there is not much incentive.

By now our own little astronauts, with a combination of hard work and cribbing, had completed their questionnaires. They were given a badge, a diploma signed by French astronauts and a poster of Mars. Our reward was even better: after talking enthusiastically for ten minutes in the car, they fell asleep all the way home.

Need to know

Cité de l'Espace, Avenue Jean Gonord, Toulouse (00 33 5 62 71 64 80, www.cite-espace.com) is open daily. Adult tickets from about £14; children, about £10; under-fives free.

Getting there By air with easyJet (www.easyjet.com) from Bristol, from £43.29, or from Gatwick, from £45.29. By train with Rail Europe (0844 8484070, www.raileurope.co.uk) from St Pancras, from £109 adults, £94 children (4-11).

Staying See the Cité de l'Espace website for hotels. The two-star Campanile (00 33 5 61 54 46 25, www.campanile.com) has room-only doubles from about £60.

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