Earlier this week, we learned that the Trump administration had tasked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross with monetizing space. This struck us as a unique staffing move not only because Ross’s reported habit of falling asleep during key meetings suggests he shouldn’t be within a 100-foot radius of a piece of heavy machinery, but because, to our knowledge, he doesn’t know jack shit about outer space. Alleged wealth inflation? Guy’s an expert. Fashion that screams “I feel at home among robber barons”? There’s nobody better than him. Wall Street fraternities? Ross is your man. But space? Not so much. This being the Trump administration, though, expertise is in no way a prerequisite; Ross, obviously, is being brought in to “implement a more business-friendly approach” by “rolling back regulatory burdens,” and not because he has even a perfunctory grasp of the subject matter at hand, which became even more painfully obvious thanks to a CNBC interview.

In an appearance on the business network today, Ross said that the White House hopes to “turn the moon into a kind of gas station for outer space,” which it will do by using “the dark surfaces that you see when you look up at the moon, [which] are actually hundreds of feet of solid ice”; “break[ing] the ice down into hydrogen and oxygen,” and “us[ing] those as the fuel propellant.” The only problem? According to Dr. Kevin Peter Hickerson, nuclear physicist and Surely You’re Joking host, Ross is ostensibly talking out of his ass.

“Hundreds of feet of solid ice? That’s not even remotely true,” Hickerson told me, noting that the patches Ross referred to are actually ancient lava flows. “Yes, there is water on the moon, but it’s not pure ice, it’s about 0.1 percent of the mass and locked up in rock.” He added that, while there is ice on the moon’s poles, “and we can possibly extract water and make fuel from that . . . it’s not the cost-effective venture he’s suggesting.” Perhaps, Hickerson noted, Ross was referring to the “sci-fi fuel of the future” called Helium-3 that does exist on the moon, but that scientists haven’t figured out how to use yet. “Maybe someone mentioned that to [Ross] and he got confused,” Hickerson posited.

“I don’t think these folks have the firmest grasp on science or engineering,” Phil Plait, an astronomer and science communicator who writes for SYFY.com, told me. “They might think we’re going to set up a 7-11 on the moon, but it’s not like that. We don’t have the technology. If we go to the moon it’s to explore it, scientifically, and we should do that, but it’s not to make money, not initially.” Memo to Mick Mulvaney: don’t factor moon revenues into the White House budget just yet.