Andrew Griffith, who has been in charge of the space sector since November, also mistook Jupiter for Saturn.
  • Bassman27@lemmy.world
    28·
    10 months ago

    Former investment banker and businessman. Really says it all about the structure of the current government. Why would you put someone who can’t even grasp the very basics of our solar system in charge of this?

  • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    27·
    10 months ago

    I love how he says he’s learning on the job and isn’t an encyclopedia because it obviously requires a phd level education to know the difference between a planet and a fucking star.

  • Nougat@kbin.social
    18·
    10 months ago

    Worse still:

    Andrew Griffith, who has been in charge of the space sector since November, also mistook Jupiter for Saturn.

    You know, Saturn, famous for its massive rings.

    • FMT99@lemmy.world
      14·
      10 months ago

      To be fair that’s an easier mistake to make than confusing Mars and the frickin Sun

    • 1rre
      2·
      10 months ago

      In fairness it seems like it was displayed without rings, but if you’re into space then you should be able to see the difference as saturn is far more featureless (at least from the pictures we have), but if the projection on the sphere is lower resolution and the red spot is on the other side I could see them being confused I guess

      Equally though you could not make a fool of yourself but pointing out things which should be fairly obvious as the minor popularity gains of “knows common knowledge facts about topics they should be an expert in” are far outweighed by any chance of “looks like a buffoon for not even knowing common knowledge facts about things they should be an expert in”

  • Baggins@beehaw.orgEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Easy to enough to do though. One’s big, yellow and hot and the other’s small, red and cold.

    Any of us could be caught out there.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
    4·
    10 months ago

    Well they’re both roughly the same colour. I can see his confusion.

    One is big, and red, and hot.
    The other is small, and red, and cold

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    24·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    On a walk around the Science Museum in London, Mr Griffith pointed to an exhibit showing the surfaces of different planets, the House magazine reported.

    A year on from the failure of Britain’s first rocket launch, Mr Griffith insisted that the UK “is a great spacefaring nation”.

    The former investment banker and businessman said that in order for humans to colonise Mars, “you’re going to need a lot of the British research and innovation that we’re funding right now”.

    Peregrine Mission One, which was the first American attempt to land on the Moon in 50 years, was carrying an instrument built by UK scientists before its journey was brought to an end by a run of technical problems.

    The device was supposed to analyse the thin lunar atmosphere as well as find out more about how water might be moving around the moon.

    “I think having things like a space strategy, which the UK didn’t have until recently, gives people a long-term roadmap so they understand what we’re doing as a government.”

    The original article contains 456 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      10 months ago

      This bot should potentially find paragraphs that include words from the headline. It seems to have missed anything about the mistake that the headline is referring to.