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 that 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 on several fronts 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 the series of us have ministrations going back for a period of years they wanted too. Move the so routine access to lower earth 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. Had 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 the last last night 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 another 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 d. A think that this space x. Launch gets us any closer to that. Well you really have to think of these in as 2 separate projects fall into 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 the 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 impact of the federal budget from the pandemic questions are being raised about how much money will be available of last month nasa did distribute money or only set up contracts for 3 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 send we welcome back university of massachusetts Professor EmeritusRichard Wolfe a richard a 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 news 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 that newsies 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 recruit 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 ition if the fall semester amounts to a glorified correspondence course and the buzz word 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 eyes the 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 well again let we link back to what we just talked about the colleges and universities like the food group crews are in a desperate 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 theyll damiens back or back in 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 that 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 what you 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 shust as we were flattening the curve what else should we be thinking about that we may not be as the twin stories of a lifetime dominate News Coverage we will question more with Michael Maloof when we come back this is the big picture of. Dolly is what eyes of the. Year we care the music with us. With a drag here. By. Going to get rid of those who will not go away you will not die quite. Real the heart of what we do is the truth. Is youll be a reflection of reality. In a world transformed. What will make you feel safe. Isolation or community. Are you going the right way or are you being led so. What is true what is faith. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the death. Or inmate in the shallows. This past week American Cities were on fire corona virus 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 hes told governors if they cant handle it with there are a state National Guard units hes 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 1902 during the rodney king riots michel 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 militant 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 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 a tense 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. Will do what the commander in chief once and 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 the 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 potential 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 pass otitis 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. Because president bush bush one had declared a National Emergency at that time we could use we could use our reserves forces and and 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 minimal 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 fall 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 so 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 a. Back up to to the secret service to and to other Law Enforcement agencies within the district. Beyond 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 right but i think in the weeks ahead especially. During the funeral of joyce floyd come next week we 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 its shredded the u. S. Economy i think the fact that the president had a News Conference on friday 2 to friday morning to show 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 it has a tremendous way to go i probably 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 advisers have warned democrats look this could be a really rough search it could go into the 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