A ride with the russians to join our russian partners at the International Space station and 86000000. 00 cab fare so when private enterprise got the usa back into the game with the reuse of all rocket no less it was a proud moment a respite from all else thats challenged us lately here on earth where in space do we boldly go next lets ask a long time Network Space correspondent john business coauthor with jail pickering of among other books the handsome picturing apollo 11 rare views and undiscovered moments in the space age presidency of john f. Kennedy a rare photographic history john space x. Had already been shuttling cargo up to the i. S. A. s how is ferrying astronauts there a game changer as we continue to explore that final frontier. I think its significant im sorry. Well from holland 1st of all as you say its the 1st time a private company has done that and thats sort of been the goal of a series of us have ministrations going back for a period of years they wanted to move this routine access to lower its orbit as we call it off on the private sector. Simply for getting astronauts up and down to the space station and equipping it with the with cargo so its accomplished that at least those 1st launch and thats very significant number 2 it also does save money as you mentioned 86000000. 00 per seat of her astronaut for a russian watch this is down now to 51000000. 00 still pretty expensive but its a savings and finally id say theres a just a significant aspect of this in terms of National Abilities and capabilities that we now can once again send humans into space from u. S. Soil. At launch was a hell of a moment were all watching with bated breath and now that theyre up there what are the tasks at hand what are they working on aboard the International Space station now john. These 2 astronauts have essentially become part of the i assess crew for the next either one month 2 months or 3 months were not quite sure how long this mission is going to be but for that period of time theyre serving as flight engineers one of the 1st things they did it was a bit of symbolism is they capture the flag and what that means is there was a u. S. Small u. S. Flag that was left up at the space station by the last shuttle crew it was carried on the very 1st Shuttle Mission as well so when doug hurley who was. Not on the Shuttle Mission left you of the flight up there and said one of our private companies will be back to capture this flag will it be space x. Or boeing well boeing said some problems as you may have heard so space x. Got to capture the flag. In the next couple of weeks bob behnken is going to be doing a spacewalk and then the rest of their time theyre doing various research and other technological experiments in conjunction with the the 2 so the russians the one american who are already on the station. We are speaking with space journalist and author john business who was last with us here on the 50th anniversary of man setting foot on the moon and john a woman could if the Artemis Mission goes off in 2024 as hoped and when you were with us last time you called that goal optimistic do you think that this space x. Launch gets us any closer to that. Well you really have to think of these and as 2 separate projects all in 2 separate buckets if you will space x. Is for routine access to lower earth orbit but youre not going to go to mars with space x. At least not the current configuration so you. Other basket the other project is nasa has ambitious plan to build a large booster to have the capability to go back to the moon and on to mars that continues to be beset by technical the why is im still not very optimistic that 2024 will the goal will be met and now theres a new question of budgets with the pact of the federal budget from the pandemic questions to being raised about how much money will be available of last month nasa did distribute money early set up contracts for 3. 00 Different Companies to compete to build the lunar lander so theyre still on track to do it just probably not as soon as they might like the pandemic has really changed the game thank you john business author and space journalist always appreciate your time meanwhile back here on earth we have challenges and we welcome back university of massachusetts Professor EmeritusRichard Wolfe a richard one of the stories weve been following all along piqued again this week as were reading that prices for food we eat at home are up sharply this is a 46 year spike according to one and now assess why is this happening and can we expect prices to stabilize after the pandemic im afraid that it was here is not very good used to basic reality. Between the inner ability for us to prepare for the pandemic and now the difficulties we have managing it remember we still have less than 5 percent of our people even tested so we dont even know where the disease is youve had these massive closures all kinds of businesses and that includes directly or indirectly the food business and the Food Companies to whether they grow it or process it or ship in or sell it to you in that store theyre suffering like everybody else and like everybody else theyre desperately trying to figure out how to save their businesses so theyre cutting back on employees thats one of the reasons we have so much unemployment theyre cutting back and not paying the rent in april and may for example roughly half those oars in america did not pay rent to the landlord or whatever a space they were occupying so the landlords are a stock and they in turn can pay their bankers for the loans they took out well some of the things every company is thinking about is can they raced prices at the same time that they cut their costs in order to retool at least part of the profits that they have lost because of how the pandemic was gandel in this country and now the economic crash on top of it and so yes youre going to see price rises across the board because thats one of the Ways Companies as a to try to recover their situation its bad for the rest of us but thats kind of the situation where were in everybody is hurt and because we dont have an Economic System that brings people together but puts them in a competitive struggle everybody is trying to save himself or herself and their own business and food price rises are part of that equation. Everybody is right and the supply chain interruptions touch every industry including yours and i want your professors perspective on another controversy many colleges just said schools out when the shutdown happened and the fall semester is a great big question mark and parents are screaming bloody murder about paying full boat to wish and if the fall semester amounts to a glorified correspondence course and the buzzword that ive heard lately is credit wars meaning if the kids stay home and do some of their freshman soft more courses at the Community College until the ivy walls get back up to full speed are the ivies going to accept those credits are we seeing ivy league read richard. Yes i think you are and i think you can point it quite correctly but again what we link back to what we just talked about the colleges and universities like those little group whos only that nest rich struggle people dont want to pay for a College Education when theyre not mention one when theyre getting it correspondent or thats perfectly understandable and families that are hurt by unemployment which is virtually everything we in the country are on risk rational pressures that colleges dont want to give up and one of the few things the ivy league is the prestige of their credit so damiens back or back you know order to say to people we will not allow you to get access to our credits unless you pay us its naked it doesnt have much to do with education but in our society when the financial dimension is given such power yes youre going to see this kind of be an 8 year on the part of universities just like everybody else trying to squeeze profitability out of a desperately her economic situation. Richard you among others have reminded us from time to time that the stock market is not the economy and doesnt now prove that to wall street has a history of hating uncertainty but the bull market seems undaunted im down to about 30 seconds so this may be unfair but why do you reckon all this chaos has been priced in. I think the reality is it the stock market believes that there is no uncertainty that the government the Federal Reserve the United States government will follow money into the stock market give it to the rich thanks Insurance Companies and all of that theyll see all the money into the stock market it becomes an enormous a casino funded by the United States government theyre convinced that republicans and democrats alike wont divert from that pattern and thats why theyre confident in buying in recent months and thats why its so out of touch with the reality for the rest them. I hope everyone watching remembers which said you know university of massachusetts Professor EmeritusRichard Wolffe thanks again for your time coming up when race riots broke out we stopped thinking about coronavirus just as we were flattening the curve what else should we be thinking about that we may not be as these twin stories of a lifetime dominate News Coverage we will question more with Michael Maloof when we come back this is the big picture and. We go to work some straight home. Business job where cocaine says were for books with the i just said the everybody use cocaine. Cocaine you can smoke it this is worth 5030. 20. Came to this is about a 15. 00 big people smoke this one figures this we you go fund these drugs in any city in the United States that you walk along as you or want to get it about the. And make money. If thats what it. Is it really is that they should stay or should i go is it real or is it fake thats the question of our day. This past week American Cities were on fire coronavirus which has killed over 100000 americans seemed less urgent certainly to rioters and to knuckleheads crowding pools and bars some 40000000 americans remain unemployed and many of the businesses that have been shut down arent going to be able to reopen how does the usa look to people and leaders in the rest of the world and what else should we be paying attention to right now while these 2 big stories block out the sun lets ask longtime pentagon official Michael Maloof who is also sticking close to home broadcasting remotely michael welcome back to the big picture thank you thanks for having me. In audio lead from his Conference Call with the governors weve heard President Trump be rate them for not being tough enough he uses the word dominate and dominant force and he has told governors if they cant handle it with there are a state National Guard units he is going to get the job done with the military his authority to do so apparently being the 18007 insurrection act signed into law by Thomas Jefferson last invoked in 1992 during the rodney king riots michael weve seen mad dog mattis speak out the sitting defense secretary the chairman of the joint chiefs have all stepped on the president s message take us inside the pentagon at a moment like this whats the mood and what sort of Contingency Planning theres all of this tough talk trigger in the Conference Room there. Well i think that what we saw was a lot of open disparity in the leadership and esper the defense secretary basically was taken to the woodshed and i think hes going to be ok for now and the president doesnt want to be. Changing defense secretaries in the lead up to the elections thats number one but number 2 with mattis and mullen the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff theyre coming from an old school concepts of alliances and what have you with our allies they dont like to see whats going on overseas and they certainly dont are uncomfortable with watching having military u. S. Military forces policing a do in doing the Law Enforcement that is a last resort it has been done as you point out i recall in 1968 i was in washington at the time that half of washington was burned down and the military was called out by Lyndon Johnson and we had curfews it around here for months and i would see black clouds of smoke wafting over the Capitol Building it was a very treacherous times i would say it was much more chaotic and intense then than it is now and back then we also had the vietnam war ongoing so those were very very. Bitter times and it had a residual effect to this day in terms of people accepting and respect in the u. S. Military. The the military and say. Well do what the commander in chief and once in the do. And i think trump basically threatened to invoke the insurrection act in order to get the governors and the mayors to act because he felt that the looting. And they and the disturbances in the writein apart from the Peaceful Demonstrations were taking over the streets once again and he wanted to avoid that and also on coming on top of the pandemic as well as the high levels of unemployment it was a prescription for disaster in terms of any attention for recovery now were seeing military forces under his command to be on standby but hes hoping that the that it will prompt the the mayors and the governors to take effective Law Enforcement action its interesting its interesting about the insurrection act its the only law that puts aside the socalled commie commie pasta tartus act and we invoke the posse comitatus act back when we went into iraq in the 1st time iraq war and in back in 1990. Even though we had the authority under the because president bush bush one had declared a National Emergency at that time we could use we could use our reserves forces and in our military to actually undertake Law Enforcement action but to ensure that we didnt have liability and and lawsuits we would have customs go in as a Law Enforcement entity to go into entities that were assisting Saddam Hussein at that time in the United States to actually extract information that was vital for targeting so that was one of the one of the things i did youre in the Desert Shield desert storm now but i think that what happened what we saw. This past week with esper being called back to the white house being rapped on the knuckles i dont i think that he got the message and i think hes i think that everything is going to add back in line thats why. You saw the president come out in a News Conference this morning hailing they had the latest. Employment figures going back up he has to show that psychologically that the nation is getting back up on its feet and to diminish the importance and the focus on that military uses now i understand the mayor of washington was very upset she wants to kick out the National Guard guard that came in from other states where the president has that authority to bring them in for. Back up to to the secret service to and to other Law Enforcement agencies within the districts. Gian that i think its going to probably even if the climate within the cities remain low key there is Peaceful Demonstrations this supposed to be a big big demonstration this weekend in Washington Well see how that goes theres going to be but i think in the weeks ahead especially during the funeral of joints floyd come next week weve got to see what the reaction will be on the streets and if the Law Enforcement entities the Police Forces and the National Guard units within the various states are up to the task but that isnt to say however that the u. S. Military isnt on standby they are right right now you talked about the domestic overlap between the civil unrest story and the coronavirus story wider angle shot to what extent if any has this pandemic tilted geo political balance are there winners and losers because of the coronavirus. Oh yeah decimate it is shredded the u. S. Economy lets face it it shredded the u. S. Economy i think the fact that the president had a News Conference on friday to 2 friday morning to show. Oh that its actually a new one and new employment records being set to show that the United States is getting back on its feet again economically but it still has a long way to go and has a tremendous way to go we probably wont see a full recovery until another year if that but he wants to be able to show between now and the elections that the economy is is back up on the rise and even some of president former president obamas advisors have warned democrats look this could be a really rough search it could go into that period of the elections and theyre not very concerned theyre very concerned about that and i think that that is something that they are theyre watching very very closely. Well in a Washington PostOpinion Column venerable conservative pundit george will warns that a broad anti americanism sleeps a lightly when it sleeps at all and it is wide awake as decent people judge our Nations Health by the character of those to whom power is trusted michael as you have spoken to your contacts around the world how does the usa look to people and leaders elsewhere and beyond the book how does the chaos here at home tip the fragile balance that we were watching 6 months ago in the gulf and elsewhere i got a little over a minute. Ok it has it has really concerned people overseas because the u. S. Has been the rock of stability in terms of the western world order and thats why youre seeing the United States now militarily pivoting toward the east toward china chinas going to be the big deal china is going to be because they have recovered pretty much from the coronavirus and we still have a ways to go that gives them a leg up in terms of trying to get back up on their feet and to begin to expand through their belt Road Initiative and with 136 countries that belong to it already and that it does raise questions in the e. U. Come on the e. U. Countries whether the u. S. Is still going to be a reliable partner with with home to deal cannot make lee in the future as a market and that that is open to question because trump has already said were going to be bringing back u. S. Jobs working here and but they but they dont all exporting countries so theyre going to need to have export markets and were going to turn and pivot more toward china i predict. Yeah you lit us up about 6 months ago on this belton road story then and i have every suspicion that 6 months from now youre going to be here talking about it then Michael Maloof thanks again for your time always welcome here at the big picture. While the president of the United States uses social media to complain about being censored by social media we have to keep warning you about viewer discretion advised because there are disturbing images of violence on the street captured by our digital cohorts via social media as dan rather wrote many years ago the camera never blinks when the economy crashes what a good 3 guys get totally and everything is a disaster you know you have riots it goes back to where we used to be when we were great when you guys put somebody in the car these dont know. That they were good. Very good but. I just i guess. The u. K. And i mean of the people. I think the president did when the looting starts. To lose. Tim scott of South Carolina the only africanamerican republican in the United States senate characterized the president s tweets as not constructive without any question and senator scott offered that hes thankful that we can have the conversation and that we have the ability to sit down and dialogue and how we move this nation forward conversation has never been more important so i want you to think about something before you click to send that tweet ask yourself is this going to help or hinder. The piece that we are all seeking and my offer stands i am at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i will follow you on next weeks show are the airlines good to go is there anywhere to go and is this destined to be the summer of staycation dont miss us then set your d. V. R. If you will miss us live if you see a somewhere else and its easier you can find r t america live when you click the live stream at youtube dot com slash r t America Direct t. V. We are channel 321 on the supercool pluto t. V. System channel 279 if you have that dish dish were to 80 and you simply must download our portable t. V. App it is free in the app store and it is just a scream im holland cook home here in rhode island the great ocean state and ill be back with the extra week in the meantime please stay safe and question more. You can out the vote with the you like. Were told the civil unrest in the United States and beyond is about systemic racism were told western institutions are values are inherently fun and. Neither really explain the real evidence of social breakdown what is really in play here is an ideology and ideology that demands absolute submission. They can come and blow our brains out at any given time and we cant really do anything actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people. War illegally get away with. All of the fire crawls still birria all the troubled history failed the point its hollow flame to k. K. K. Exists because america wants it to exist they have the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and theyre dead to me theyre worse off than the people who destroyed the World Trade Centers are those pro white. Greetings and salutation. United states of america is on fire in the course of just over one weeks time thousands upon thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in city after city across the country from sea to shining sea to announce in one unified voice that black lives matter and that the violence and institutional racism of the u. S. Criminal Justice System and now. The rebellion my friends has begun and i dont use that word lightly i dont use rebellion lightly and while this massive uproar