Last night Channel Four News had a segment on the failure of the UK’s first space mission, when a rocket carrying the first satellites launched from British soil ended up in smoke instead of in orbit.
Following a two minute film questioning whether the UK could really become a major player in the new space race, a four minute interview with Dr Anna Hogg, an Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds who spoke as a representative of Space Hub Yorkshire, managed to change my perception of what just happened from “Geez, what an expensive embarrassment…” to “Space is wondrous and this is just the start of the adventure!”.
Dr Hogg is simply one of the most effective scientific communicators I’ve ever come across. So this morning I decided to watch the interview back and analyse what made her appearance so compelling. (You can watch it for yourself here – with the disclaimer that I don’t know how long the link will remain active).
First of all, a word on her appearance and demeanour. She wore a simple black turtleneck, her hair was down, away from her face, which was simply made up. It took just a few seconds to process her appearance, leaving my brain free to fully concentrate on her message.
She has a very expressive, animated face and smiled often. Instead of being set in, say, a defensive grimace, her demeanour conveyed from the very beginning a sense of passion and enthusiasm for her field which, along with her spoken message, literally moved me from one set of assumptions and a scathing, hostile mood to a much more nuanced and hopeful understanding of that just happened and how it fits into the (thrilling) wider picture.
Language next: at no point in the interview did Dr Hogg slip into technical language or use terms a bright 15 year old would not have been able to understand. The passion in her tone kept you hooked.
Finally, as far as messaging is concerned, Dr Hogg conveyed three things extremely well:
1) She managed to reframe the way we should read the event from the failure to launch the satellites into orbit to the success of the first UK launch into space. Launching rockets is really hard, she said, yet we just accomplished it and we’re ready for the next stage, with different UK sites vying for the next launch.
2) Speaking with authority as a climate scientist she highlighted what's really at stake, explaining that, although environmentally costly to launch, satellites are by far the least damaging way to gather data essential for the monitoring of and the fight against climate change. The new space age is centred on data gathering by satellites and the UK, a leader in space technology and data processing, is very much in the race regardless of the partial failure of this launch.
3) Gracefully sidestepping the politics in a question about how Brexit has impacted the UK’s ability to become a space leader, Dr Hogg left the viewers in no doubt that success will remain linked in our ability to cooperate and raise funding internationally. To use her words, “science is a team sport and so is space exploration”.
Genuine expertise, passion and a willingness to grapple with the difficult questions without showing annoyance or defensiveness will carry you a long way even in a four minute interview, taking the viewers with you to infinity and beyond.
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