I got to The Franklin Institute about 10,30, an hour after they opened. There was no parking, and I circled the garage twice. There were spaces that were blocked off by a cone. I shrugged, moved one of the cones, and parked. (No one cared that I did so.) By the time I got to the elevator, staff were valet parking cars - and doing so by essentially double parking them in back of cars in spaces. Urgh. Would have been nice for them to do that earlier, and save me the aggravation.
I'll admit to being a bit disappointed by the day, but first a bit of background: A dozen years ago, when Brian Duffy, Dan Brandenstein and Rick Hieb (not coincidentally, all working for Lockheed Martin at the time) were at the FI, they held talks in a room in front of an audience.
Saturday, NASA Astronaut Christina Hammock Koch's talk was private. Nothing was mentioned of that, unless you interpret "NASA's Driven to Explore exhibit will be available for public viewing ..." to be the ONLY thing that was open to the public. Just "Astronaut Christina Koch will share her stories about what it takes to become an astronaut ...."
You needed a ticket from GSK Science to attend her talk. Thankfully, a friend bought me a ticket, which was held near the Ben Franklin National Monument, which is a free space in the Institute (e.g.,you don't need to purchase admission to see Ben.)
As well, nobody at the museum knew anything about the Philadelphia STEM Festival, which this was. And a bit of background: The World Science Festival in NYC, while held on the NYU campus, features a street full of exhibitors (free) and some ticketed and some other free events.
Outside was the NASA truck and a spacesuit to take a photo with. That's it. There may have been some stuff downstairs, but I didn't take a look.
It doesn't bother me that there was no signing. I just wish NASA and/or the Franklin Institute could have made things clearer as to what was going on - that the STEM festival (which I couldn't find info on) was a separate, ticketed event, and perhaps a link to the festival would have been nice. My Tweets to the Institute went unanswered, and NASA-JSC, to their credit, replied to me on their Facebook, saying their NASA exhibit will be outside and hard to miss."
