Much continue to send workers to west africa to defeat the disease at its source. The Federal Reserve is ending its landmark bond purchase row gram. They say the labor market is Strong Enough to withstand the end of the meal is. The u. S. Equity markets responded by closing down slightly. And visa, the Worlds Largest debit and credit card company, says sales rose in the fourth quarter. Profits at visa fell 10 after an 11 increase last quarter. The Company Announced a new 5 billion share buyback. And executive changes at twitter. Dick costolo has been remaking the executive team as they try to reverse slumping user growth. Today, the little blue bird of twitter announced a partnership with big blue, ibm. To our lead how big a setback is the explosion of the rocket to the private space race . This was the scene as the unmanned rocket blew up on launch yesterday. And we have liftoff. The Third Mission to the iss. Main engines at 108 . The Orbital Sciences spacecraft was headed to the International Space station on a resupply mission. Nasa says the astronauts in space are in no danger of running out of supplies. In the meantime, an investigation is underway to see what caused the 200 million rocket and spacecraft to blow up. With me in the studio is cory johnson, and on skype, former astronaut and iss commander and also, colonel Chris Hatfield and bestselling author of you are here, around the world in 92 minutes. How big a setback is this for nasa and Orbital Sciences . How big a surprise is Something Like this happening . It is a setback. This is not something that will jeopardize the program. Launching rockets even though we have been sending astronauts to space for 50 years, youve got very complex pieces of machinery and anytime you have to put that much energy into the vehicle, there will be risks and mishaps like you saw yesterday. They are going to do a full investigation and find the root cause and learn lessons and apply it and that will lead to more robust rockets in the future. But as you heard, there was no injury on the ground and they have enough margin on the iss for food, water and oxygen and things like that. The biggest impact is orbital, this has impacted their company quite a bit. They have been doing this for several decades. Not a total surprise because in this industry, it is not routine. Both of you are astronauts and you know an investigation is underway and it is early hours at this point. Chris, any early ideas about what may have happened . Leroy and i have both written ridden a couple of different kinds of rockets, so its nice to have a chance to talk about it. Listening to frank culbertson, who was the person talking last night and watching the video, you could see the big first stage engines work, theyve got a liftoff and then a few seconds after it was off the launch pad, something significant failed. You could see the color coming out of the back changed, as if the mixture between oxygen and fuel suddenly changed. Then there was an instantaneous loss of power. Frank talked about this as well you look like something might have been coming up the side of the base of the rocket which might indicate the engine itself was coming apart. Its too soon to be conclusive, but as leroy stressed, the station is ok, the six people in orbit are ok, and no one was hurt. Maybe it demonstrates the importance of the fact that it is an International Space station. Not counting on just one company. There was a russian launch this morning with resupply and an american launch in december with resupply, so its good to have a partnership when you are doing something as complicated and dangerous as flying in space. Its my understanding the engines used were literally made by russians in the 1960s. This is something elon musk pointed out it sounds like the punchline to a joke, he was saying, but these engines were literally made by the russians in the 1960s and mothballed for a while until Orbital Sciences found out about them. Is this the wrong technology to be using and did we see the dramatic failure . You are correct. The original nk33 engines were made by russians and ukrainians many years ago and were brought over and aerojet refurbished them and supplied them to orbital and other companies. I should mention other launch vehicles use russian kerosene engines because that was the deal made with congress way back when we started working with the russians in the mid1990s and the United States was concerned about russian engineers and scientists going to work for countries we did not want them to work for. We found ways to engage those engineers and one way was to buy kerosene engines from them because we were facing those out we were phasing those out of production and doing more advanced cryogenic engines. For a lot of technical engines, you want to use kerosene is a first stage because a generates a lot of thrust. You cannot single out orbital for using russian engines. Pretty much the only modern built kerosene engine in the United States are being done by spacex now. Is it right to do that . I think it makes sense. The russians have a lot of experience building kerosene engines. You could bring up the issue about the possible impact of the age of these engines used by other manufacturers. Age is not an issue, but i want to stress that these engines the investigation will tell if that was a factor. I want to talk about spacex and elon musk. Chris, what does this mean for the private Space Community . People like Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic . The real question of whether something is just another commercial space flight or private is who is the customer . In this case, the u. S. Government was the main customer, so it is commercial. They are paid for by the government. The only one on your list really trying to do Something Different is Richard Branson. Hes trying to change the customer from government to being an individual. He still has not flown one being passenger yet. Whether hes got the right share of the market and a viable Business Model remains to be seen, but hes feeling one whos brave enough to truly bank his business on private spaceflight. Elon musk is working, trying to use government contracts to fund the research to come up with technology that might someday lead to private spaceflight. It is a pretty interesting time in history to see how this is going and we will learn a lot from the accident that happened yesterday. We will follow the investigation as it plays out. Chris hadfield and leroy, former iss commanders. Thank you. Washington, d. C. , just passed a law that says uber could serve as a model for the rest of the country. We will speak to their policy chief coming up. Im emily chang and this is bloomberg west. The washington, d. C. , council just passed a bill that uber hopes will pave the way that will legalize and regulate ridesharing apps. Its called the vehicle for hire innovation act and has been heavily opposed by the taxi union to say it does not create a level playing field. For more, im joined by david plouffe, Senior Vice President of policy and strategy for uber. Youve only been on the job for a couple of weeks. Hows it going . Its very exciting. Its growing by leaps and bounds and theres a great group of people who are trying to improve cities and make the company grow. A lot of regulatory challenges ahead of you which you are especially skilled at working out. Tell me about what happened in d. C. And why this is such a watershed moment. I think its the 13th municipality or state in the last month california, colorado, oklahoma city, nashville there is some momentum here. Washington was a place where theres a lot of fights throughout all of this. We ended up partnering with people in the city council, a local councilwoman there in particular, to really create a standard. A lot of the debate is how do you fit uber and these other Ridesharing Companies into a framework thats 50 or 60 years old . They looked at it anew and created a new standard. The Million Dollars of insurance, state background and federal background checks on the drivers, so this is a model where we will build the momentum we have seen. Many states and cities around the world are looking for a pathway forward. Hasslefree transportation, cutting down on dui and safety elements here. I think you will see washington be something a lot of cities are looking forward to. What about new york . Its a Challenging Market and its not the only one. How are you marketing your strategies there and run the world . We work closely with the taxi and Limousine Commission to provide a pathway forward as one of our Fastest Growing cities. London is a great example. Its a taxicab city and we came in there and added to that. What a lot of people have to realize in San Francisco and london is that this is not an either or. It grows the transportation pipeline and increases the pleasing rideshare services. It helps with underserved neighborhoods. In cities where theres a Public Transportation grid, like a metrorail system, a lot of businesses not on that system suffer. Uber expands the ability for people to travel in different parts of the city. Paris is one of our Fastest Growing cities. We just entered las vegas and theres a huge pentup demand for people just pushing a button and getting a ride. We all live our lives in a way where we want information right away. We want to make a reservation for an airline right away. In the interest of transparency, im a huge uber customer and ive talked to many drivers who are happy but we see some uber drivers protesting in many parts of the country. We had a producer in philadelphia who says they are not making much money, especially with the launch of uberx and free rides that have been offered in philadelphia. How do you keep drivers happy and how do you respond to people saying they are not making a living wage . You have to look at the vast majority of drivers. We are adding thousands of drivers every week, so i think youve got people who are driving fulltime, who are making a good living and you have a lot of people driving 10 or 15 hours a week. They like complete flexibility whether you are fulltime or parttime. You dont owe anybody money on the medallion, you just press a button, then drive. If you want drive four hours tomorrow, you do that. Flexibility is key, but what you are seeing is as more and more people use uber, the more trips our drivers can make per hour. Many are sole providers, some of them have a fleet of cars. It is working well for the cities and for the drivers and i think its something that is only going to grow as more people get exposed. Even in washington and new york, there are still people learning about the business. Who comes first at uber, customers or drivers . The drivers are our customers. It doesnt work without skilled drivers who are passionate about what they are doing. They are the bedrock of the company. One of the great things is the drivers and riders have relationships and talk all the times about their lives in the city. Its a strong relationship and when we want to foster and help grow. Thank you so much for joining us today. Always great to hear from you guys. Forget its 19 billion now 22 billion purchase of whatsapp. Facebook is planning to spend more on the long term. What could be facebooks next target . Welcome back to bloomberg west. Facebook shares are tumbling today. They say spending will increase 50 to 60 next year and user growth is slowing. They reported that their user base grew to 1. 35 billion, up yearoveryear, but down over the 3 growth it had in the prior quarter. Cory johnson is with me now to discuss. Facebook has always focused on user growth before it focused on monetization. You barely see any ads on instagram. They might focus on it, but they are not getting into it the way they used to. They are reaching the extent to the law of large numbers where there just are not that many users who are not of facebook except places where they can be like china or africa where there is a distribution issue. Lets talk about whatsapp. I talked to Sheryl Sandberg and she emphasized this is how we do it were not planning on monetizing that anytime soon and then you heard zuckerberg say we want to get to a billion users before we even try to touch it. You came by my desk when i was freaking out when the whatsapp financial filing came out. Facebook filed financial numbers for them and we can see how bad a Business Model it is all stop they have a lot of users and want to find a way to monetize it. This business was losing so much money. They lost 300 million in the first half of this year. Its not just expensive in terms of what it cost, whatsapp, its expensive because of how much it lost and is presumably continuing to lose. What about oculus . What did Mark Zuckerberg say about oculus . He said dont expect anything anytime soon. He said just wait, you will see. The facebook business is so good they are able to run it with taking a lot of risk and spending money in projects that might not work out. Thats the thing that has investors concerned. They see the r d spending by facebook, which is an amazing thing. Its one thing to buy oculus which is a small amount of money compared to whatsapp, which was a ridiculous amount of money, but the r d spending less quarter was just huge. Beyond r d, its the percentage of revenue. The r d spending, the revenues were instantly devoted to r ds spending and this is almost as big as it has ever been. They did it right before the ipo before they became a Public Company. Cory johnson, our editor at large. We are seeing not just facebook but google and amazon making these big moonshot bets. It will be interesting to see how they lay out. Germanys rocket internet is bringing one of its copycats to the United States. We will hear from one of the Companies Startups launching in chicago today. Time for on the markets. Lets get you caught up on where stocks traded today. The Federal Reserve confirmed it would end quantitative easing and as a result, the markets extended those losses. You saw the dollar with fresh highs against the euro and the yen. This is bloomberg west, where we focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. Rocket internet is bringing another tech copycat to the United States. Space ways is launching in chicago today. The company allows users to order a storage box to their home, pack the box, and have it picked up and delivered to a storage facilities. It launched in london with the help of rocket internet this july, so why is the Company Turning its focus to the u. S. Market . The managing director of space ways joins us now from chicago. Explain what you do. As i understand it its like drop box for physical storage. Indeed. People go online to our website, tell us how money items they want to store, how many boxes they need to store items like books, documents, and clothing, and then we deliver the boxes for free to their doorstep and they pack the boxes and we pick them up once again for free and people pay a monthly storage fee. When they want their items back, they get returned within 24 hours. What was the inspiration here . A lot of u. S. Startups do similar things. I know all about this market now that i have done some research but there is some competition out there. There are plenty of companies around the world doing this not only in the u. S. The reason we are pursuing the Business Model is we are wellequipped to do this. It seemed like a straightforward Business Model. You need a warehouse, need drivers to pick up items, boxes. But if you look at more closely, its about having a really solid operations and never losing an item people store with you. With the backing of rocket internet, we felt like we had the capacity, systems, and processes in place to build a Great Company. Thats why we decided to launch spaceways and expand to the u. S. Because it is an amazing market in that regard. The u. S. Market is 24 billion and hasnt changed much over the last couple of years. We just thought it was time to bring it to market. You spent some time at rocket before launching this and this company has had remarkable success around the world but has been criticized for simply copying other peoples ideas, copying companies in the United States. How do you respond to that . I can speak for spaceways. The model is not new. The First Company we saw doing Something Like that was started five years ago. They launched in chicago and now there are a bunch of other companies doing the same thing. We felt the time was right to pursue this model. The first thing, the first step of building a Great Company is having this idea. And as i said, a bunch of companies are pursuing this around the world. It was more Like Movement and we felt wellequipped to have a really Strong Company that could do extremely well globally. There are a couple of other rocket startups that have launched in the United States. Are we going to see more coming . Im really focused on spaceways right now so i cannot tell you about other companies and their expansion plans. You start the company and then you think