we'll have more of "america tonight," tomorrow. >> no indictment in another racially charged case of an officer killing an unarmed black civilian leads to large protests in new york. also world leaders meet to take on i.s.i.l. as iran is taking on a larger role. and meet the press chuck todd meets us to talk about his critical book on president obama. i'm antonio mora, this is "consider this."

those stories and more ahead. >> the new york city grand jury decided not to indict the officer in the killing of eric garner. >> iran is conducting air strikes against i.s.i.l. >> what appeared to be an f-4 phantom jet. >> if iran is taking on i.s.i.l. that in fact is positive. >> oil prices are plunging. >> from caracas to tehran to moscow, countries that count on high oil prices are bracing for tough time. >> scott panetti lives to see another day. >> his lawyers say he is too ill to suffer capital punishment. >> barack obama in in the white house, he thought washington would change by his mere presence. >> nasa is getting ready to

launch, a vehicle that could carry stroants t astronauts to r mars. >> another controversial decision in a involved police and minorities. a grand jury in new york city decided not to charge a officer who killed a black man in staten island. officer pantdaler pantal ler i. >> i said leave me alone. i can't breathe, i can't breathe. >> 11 times garner, an asthmatic, said he couldn't breathe. moments later he was dead. civil rights investigation, president obama summed up frustrations voiced by many minorities about their dealings with police.

>> people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly. this is an american problem and no, sir just a black problenot a brown problem. when anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that's a problem. and it's my job as president to help solve it. [applause] >> and new york's mayor pleaded for calm. >> we really want to di dignifye life of eric garner you will do so through peaceful protest. you will not sully his name with violence or vandalism. that doesn't bring us closer to a better community. >> and the new york police department boosted presence throughout the city but protests moved throughout manhattan some at grand central station. >> andy king, thomas ruskin, responsible for crisis management for the mayor and the police commissioner.

he is now president of the cmp protective and investigative group. it's very good to have you with us. tom we saw that terrible video of what happened there, the police officer put mr. garner in a choke hold. the choke hold is banned by the police department in new york. it's not illegal however. but you know with all this evidence, we've seen, even though all of it has not been released, seeing this video it's difficult to believe is it not that he was not at least indicted on some charge? >> no, not to me. i have been there during these type of arrests. i have seen someone of eric garner's size resist arrest. you see very clearly in this video the way i view it, that the officers are telling him to put his hands behind his back, he is going to be arrested. he is double i the size of any officer there. you are going to see him under

arrest. >> but five officers four literally on top of him as he's saying i can't breathe i can't breathe wasn't that an overreaction? >> well at the point in time where he doesn't breathe you have to render him first aid. it is the only thing i see that's disturbing after mr. garner is on the ground. you have to make sure as a police officer you have to arrest the person but you also have to make sure the person is alive and well to stand trial at a later date. >> councilman, to his point, there was some resistance by mr. garner, he was exative not physically but flailing his hands, he was argumentive. >> as we watch the video, we see a young man frustrated by feeling he is being harassed by nypd. when i see the video and i see a man being taken down and calls out he can't breathe he can't breathe, when do the officers on

scene decide to make a decision via their own policies, you have a responsibility to step in and stop that activity or you'd be held accountable for whatever happens to the alleged perpetrator. and again we're talking about a young man who has been taken down for selling cigarettes and still today we don't know a charge because there is no evidence of anything. >> they were going after him for an extremely minor crime of selling cigarettes. this was not in theory a very dangerous situation. but to tom's point again there was that resistance. does that make a difference as you go to a grand jury? >> this is where we get to the point are we talking about the act or do we talk about the history that gets us to this place? because when i look at this video it appears i see a number of officers caucasian, you go out into the wild and you're trying to take down a bear.

we're going to do what we have to do. we're going to have this conversation with him because this is what we feel about him because the history between law enforcement and blacks in one. when you walk into the scenario do you treat him as the regular working man who is abiding the law or do you look at him as history has dictated? >> first of all, it is not illegal to put someone in a choke hold. it's against department policy. the grand jury heard all the evidence which we don't even know what they heard at this point in time, and they decided based on the preponderance of the evidence the totality of the evidence not to indict the officer. we are sworn at some level to abide and support the constitution of the united states. our constitution called for a grand jury. the grand jury heard the evidence and decided that there was no crime committed by this officer. >> right but doesn't this raise questions about our system, just

as the ferguson case raised those questions? especially in this case we have staten island is the most conservative of new york bureaus and the prosecutor here is an elected official in staten island. so he also knows his constituency. prosecutors also work closely with police all the time. so can you be confident that a prosecutor under those circumstances would be aggressive in a grand jury going after a police officer? >> i think this law, i know enough people in the judicial process and can steer a conversation to direct juries to go anywhere you want them to go in the conversation. i think right here we have to figure out how do we make sure that justice and fairness is served to all americans all new yorkers and i think that's what hasn't happened. we keep acting like america doesn't have a racial divide. it's built on a racial divide. when we still have conversations

around communities of color, there's something wrong. if grand juries decide not to return an indictment, this is your son, if you could see yourself in this scenario, you could find enough -- >> there's significant presence on that grand jury though. >> but to the councilman's again -- [simultaneous speech] >> there is no evidence that they were picking on mr. brown there because he was a man of color but i agree with the councilman that police departments around this country have to study these things and make better efforts at bringing the communities together. that white officers have to work black communities and they have to do community policing and they have to understand the neighborhoods that they're patrolling and that's very important. >> i want to talk about that a

little more in a second. but i want to ask you about the system so you get your word in here because you were a detective for the police department. you know how you guys work closely with prosecutors. do you think it's a fair system to have a prosecutor having to push for an indictment of a police officer, if you've got that very close relationship? should there not be in these cases a special prosecutor someone from the outside working on the grand jury? because you know as well as i do, the saying out there you can dieghtindict a ham sandwich if e prosecutor wants to. >> in this case they can't indict a police officer after a tragic death. no matter how you look at it, it's a tragic death, we lost a young man who was a resident in the city, there's nothing going to give in to me that the officer went out there that morning and saying, this is going to happen.

relative to your system it's the system we live with. this system dieghts police indicts officers for acts they commit every single day. we have an officer in another city who shot someone that he believed had a gun, the officer shot him, that officer is under indictment and in prison today. it doesn't work every single time but it does work. >> i guess we've got two very volatile case necessary a row are where a lot of people are raising questions about whether the system does work. i want to raise a question to you, about talking about the relationship of the new york city police department, it's a diverse police department, it's almost half minorities. representative peter king, new york congressman made the argument today that the nypd has made an enormous difference in

minority communities making them much safer over the past decades. in general this should not be an indictment of the police department? >> no, it's not an indictment of the police department. this should be a conversation to indict a system ha that has constantly failed communities of color. if we were having this conversation about different people around -- because we come in different hues and colors and shapes. but we always seem every six months or every year we have a conversation around a man of color being killed by the hands of law enforcement. something is flawed somewhere along the line. how do we correct or improve the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color? >> very quick. >> in this city we don't see that. >> and a quick answer, we've got police cameras, federal funding going to police cameras on the bodies of police officers. difference. do you think it could help sometime in the future? >> it could only help if we look

at the video and call it what it is. we can't look at the video because we have prejudicial thoughts in our mind, and we make a decision based on those bridg prejudices. >> it will help the police officer, it will show if the person they arrested was also guilty of the crime he was arrested for. >> thomas ruskin, councilman andy king. go to our social media producer, hermela aregawi. >> i can't breathe the last words eric garner uttered, this stops today and black lives matter. many protesters gathered in several location in new york city, los angeles and washington, d.c, some layingen the ground in clusters as part of what are being called die-ins, celebrities shared their reactions, after jessie williams say, guy choked to

death in front of all of us is not looked into. rapper added, more reactions online jay says the man is unarmed the choke hold is banned, the coroner ruled it a homicide, none of this matters, i can't breathe. eunice says, nonof this matters, i ex expletive all the time. some people feel we talk too much about race, really? how tired do you think i am worried about my future son. but shaquan said, some people blame for everything, when no race is present. let us know what you think, join the conversation online, @ajconsiderthis. antonio back to you. >> harchtion thanks hermella.

an aerial attack by four us made f-4 phantom jets are sending shock waves because they are part of the iranian affairs. caught by camera, in a 25 mile buffer zone as tehran has declared inside iraq near its border with iran. in the meeting in brussels on wednesday. >> if iran is taking on i.s.i.l. in some particular place, and it's confined to taking on i.s.i.l. and has an impact it's going to be a net effect as positive. >> for more on the fight against i.s.i.l. and iran's increasingly open role in that war i'm joined from orlando by michael rejent, who served as a senior intelligence officer between

2004 and 2007, adjunct professor at the international university. good to have you on the show. what do you think about secretary kerry's comment? >> his comment about iran taking on i.s.i.l. in iraq is a good thing. it's what the the sunnis think. the strategic message of saying iranian air strikes in iraq against i.s.i.s. target might be a good thing sends a bad message to sunnies that we need to fight i.s.i.s. >> if iran is getting more involved because we need the sunnies to start helping in the fight against i.s.i.s? >> we do. both iran and the abadi government have denied that iran is conducting air strikes in iraq but our pentagon and secretary kerry have stated that that may indeed be the case. there are reports going back to june of

iranian jets actioning targets in iraq. targeteers people planning missions in the military operations in iraq, working with the shia militia and security forces, in and around the shia areas and along the sectarian fault lines. so they are there, and with these reports of iranian air strikes in iraq, it's a little concerning to the sunnies that we do need to fight i.s.i.s. >> they have official ly been sited, we have this al jazeera video showing seemingly iranian planes bombing inside iraq. >> they're demonstrating their capability, and i don't think they feel constrained by the international community or the u.s. to not do these air strikes. there are reports they're doing them in syria as well.

>> these jets are fairly old, they're not entirely accurate. >> they were given to the iranians in the 1960s and 70s before the ayatollah khomeini took power. what kind of munitions are they using in iraq? i'm not sure but whether you see the assad air force using barrel bombs, there are reports, not reports, confirmation, confirmed reports that the iraqi air force used barrel bottoms in alan al anbar province. it could be perceived that the u.s. is backing not backing the iranian air strikes, but taking credit for it or in concert with it. >> the u.s. saying it's not coordinating these air strikes

with iran, presumably our command centers in qatar and kuwait and we can follow these iranian planes so we can know where they are. but is there a risk of a clash between the u.s. and the coordinated? >> this is the first time that the u.s. military has allowed air space to be shared with adversarially air forces. we're allowing air space to be shared with assad's air force in syria. this is unprecedented. this is not something that our u.s. military does. we own the air space. >> what they're saying is these iranian planes are doing this in support of iraqi forces. they are coordinating with our iraqi allies. is this just semantics because there's certainly indirect coordination. >> when we conduct air strikes we have somebody on the

ground it is not basically the iranian air force, the bad guys are over there, let's go drop a bomb because i.s.i.s. is operating there. that's not the same as from the u.s. military prospect. >> ali kadari, a special assistant to five u.s. ambassadors to iraq, he has told that where the gloves have come off, in effect the leader of lebanon, syria, iraq and yemen in representation of his boss, iran's supreme leader. so is iran do you think calling the shots now in all these countries? >> well, sulimani has had the portfolio in iraq and syria and his major effort when we were in iraq was to inflict u.s. casualties lethal

aid that flowed into sunni militias. iranian military are very comfortable partnering, with the ones in baghdad and the shia areas. they are very comfortable. and this could force officers or working with the shia officers as well. so it's not surprising to those who have followed sulimani in the past years. >> very broad part of that region, michael pregent good to have you with us. from the host of meet the press chuck todd joins us next. also oil prices are plunging. we'll look at the positives and the negatives for us here in the u.s. what do you think?

>> a dirty deal. struck at the heart of government. >> egypt mismanaged its gas industry. >> taking the country to the brink of economic ruin. >> it's obvious that egypt was being ripped off. it's basically saying to the israelis, "look if you want to screw us, here's a tool you can use to screw us". >> al jazeera exposes those who made a fortune betraying an entire nation. >> you don't feel that you owe an explanation to the egyptian people? >> no... no... >> al jazeera investigates. egypt's lost power. december 17th. 10:00 eastern. on aljazeera america.

>> barack obama swept into the white house in 2008 with his message of hope and change and the promise to end the political polarization plaguing washington. after six years in office, partisan politicking has, failed to master the political process and partly because of unrelenting republican, the pair paradoxes of the obama presidency is laid out in the book. the moderator of meet the press and the author of the stranger barack obama and the white house. chuck good to see you. >> thanks for having me on, appreciate the invitation. >> you're welcome.

you wrote that the president was disdainful of the process of politics. it's like bill gates not liking computers. how could someone who dislikes those aspects of politics so much then master the process to win two terms of president? >> he loves the campaigning. there are two different types of politics. what he doesn't like is washington politics. much of the public greez with grease with agrees with him. he is disgusted with the way washington conducts business. when he used this phrase all the time, turn the page, it was the phrase to knock the clintons and also the bushes. to break out of the politics we were in.

he struggled to do it and there's two types of politicking, there is campaigning and that's something the president enjoys it, you see the difference. when he's out campaigning, there is a bounce in his step, a santa cat ow stac stacatto in his voice. >> you blame part of it on arrogance. on capitol hill, he was an outsider and too cool and aloof and unable to play the game. obama is wired differently, believing that the rational should overcome the superficial. i've known him for quite a while but doesn't he figure out that sometimes in washington you have to be superficial and play the game even if it seems irrational if you want to get things done?

>> you get to his greatest asset and greatest liability wrapped up in one. he's more normal than most politicians, i assume most people who run for office are different than most of us, most of us don't need 50% plus 1 to important. there is a group of politicians that that's what drives them, that helps and drives their ambition. barack obama in some ways is not wired that way. that is what made him appealing i think to so many people in '07 and '08. the problem is there are just theatrics, the sometimes not understanding that others need that phone call to say hey great job thanks so much for being there. that donors want to know that you care that they showed up to your fund raisers, that ceos want to know that you care about their

opinion. he admits the theatrics are silly. he talked about the criticism he got when he went golfing after the statement he made about the beheading of james foley, i said you know what, sometimes i don't get the theatrics right. >> but if he misses and is not a good campaigner, and not a week went by in the white house without a poll focusing on voters in swing states and what they were thinking? >> well i think they did look i think some of these guys came in here with the idea that hey, we got to protect this political brand and speak to the public, every president has that focus particularly in their first term and don't let anybody who worked for any of those previous presidents tell you differently.

they can tell you they weren't focused on it. but what i think was the mandate that president obama had was to change washington. his -- he ended up now look part of it is he ended up getting the presidency he didn't expect. he was immediately sent a crisis with the economic great recession that hit immediately. >> one of the things he didn't say was you couldn't change washington when you're on the sidelines. he didn't get involved in the game. >> i think he thought washington would change on its own by his mere presence. voters sent me here, come on guys it's time you change the way you do business. i admit he needed to use a sledgehammer. >> would it have made any difference? with the tea party uprising, senator michiga

mitch mcconnell, the one thing we want is for barack obama to be a one term president. >> we don't know it in this respect, he came in not needing republicans to get an agenda passed in '09 and 10, that was a big deal. i always wonder what would his presidency look like and what would his deal be with congressional republicans if he had only 51 or 52 democratic senators, he always needed eight or ten or 12 republicans to pass major legislation, it would have forced, there would be more urgency on both sides of the negotiating table. remember accountable reenls didn't now democrats controlled everything. and the white house knew they didn't really need republican buy in. it would be nice to get it, it would be a political plus for them but they didn't need it to get stuff done. in hindsight i think there is a wish sometimes by some democrats

that he was forced to having to need republicans early on then he would have built a reservoir of goodwill i think with a smaller chunk. you're right the tea party, some of these folks he was never going to win over but you look at it the way reagan found conservative democrats to work with or bush or clinton finding more moderate republicans, are there fewer moderate republicans than there were when bill clinton was president, absolutely, certainly harder or trickier to could. but i'll give you an example, how little outreach there was, on election night 2010, john boehner is going to be the next speaker of the house, the president needs to congratulate him sort of a courtesy call, nobody had his contact information, nobody had his cell phone number. pretty symbolic. >> in the context of getting his agenda passed, the president has been

pilloried , to robert gates book and hillary clinton's book, john boehner focused barack obama on the rollout of obamacare, was that a mistake what they focused on from day 1? >> may of '09 there was a pretty important decision that was made, president chief of staff, rahm emanuel was chief of staff, now mayor of chicago. they had three paths to go down, they had just spent about $3 trillion, bailing out the economy, now it's time to turn to their own economy, 100 days in and they had yet to implement something they campaigned on. so the choices were health care, financial reform, and cap in trade, carbon tax. rahm emanuel

was basically arguing what chuck sclumer is argue today, old testament justice against wall street for creating the economic situation they created. but others say you only have political capital once, if you are going to go big, let's try move on all three fronts and let's see what happens. >> one thing you wrote that struck me, he is neither the liberal his allies hoped nor the one his enemies belittle. but you also say he doesn't see himself as a leftist or a liberal. which seems incongruous to me. >> look he doesn't. he believes he's in the mainstream. most presidents do and i think he would sit there and argue hey the health care law i pished witpushedwith the mandate was sg the republicans were in favor of in the

'90s, that version of the republican party would support. so that's where he sits there and says hey i'm not pushing an ultraliberal agenda. what's interesting i compare obama and clinton in so that i think obama is more to the left on the ideologic spectrum than clinton. i think obama is more of a pragmatist than he gets credit for. he would happily take half a loaf. some of the party are very nervous with that, but republicans don't want to cut deals with them so it's never been tested. >> what happened after the mid term elections, he came out immediately after with a fairly defiant speech. people expected him to talk about the shellacking he had four years ago but he was defiant, executive action on immigration, they pulled out this epa regulation which is

receiving a lot of opposition from conservatives, and they can't reach an agreement on taxes being extended, do you improve? >> i don't think anything is going to improve. but i can tell you i think the reason for the dephi answer is the president feels he has catered to congressional conservatives for too long. the president many of his allies believe he wishes now he would have done it a year ago, when he said -- six months ago when he said he was going to do it and he delayed it because democrats begged him to delay it. i think he regrets delaying it. i think he feels as if he wasn't given a chance to defend his own record while democrats run away from him in 2014. i think that's why he came out defiant.

he feels as if his party in some ways abandoned him and that's why he doesn't feel like he's got to -- he didn't have a chance to defend his record. and democrats didn't defend his record and he didn't get a chance to. so i think that's where the die fiance comes in. >> -- defiance comes in. >> that doesn't sound like a good rep recipe. >> on your side or the other side. >> are you afraid that the president is going to consider you per sonna non-grata grm what i saw through the pri prism of washington institutions. we'll see who knows. you know what, if that's the way it is let the chips fall where they may, right?

>> chuck gm to see you. good luck with the book, the stranger, obama in the white house. now for some more stories from around the world. we begin in texas, where a federal appeals court has halted the execution of death row inmate scott panetti, saying it needs more time to consider complex legal questions. panettis lawyers say their client who is skit phrenic is too dilutional to be executed. in the defense of his trial, he wore a cowboy outfit and tried to call jesus and john f. kennedy to the witness stand. next we head to ferguson, missouri, where michael brown's

stepfather that is apologized. police are investigating whether head's cries of burn this expletive down amounted to eenciting a riot. i screamed out words i shouldn't have schemed screementd out in the heat of the moament. i humbly ask for those to understand what we need for our community. it wasn't. we end in cuba where thursday marked the third anniversary of u.s. contractor allen gross on espionage charges. in 2011 gross was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he was accused of being part of a plot to overthrow the cuban government. in a statement asking for gross's release, his family warned his condition is deteriorating rapidly, enough is enough. he has lost 100

pounds, five of his teeth and much of his eyesight. when senator mars coe rubio said all free nations around the world have a moral duty of advocating for allen gross's immediate freedom. that's some of the news arld the world. the news isn't all good. the play station turns 20, the big business of vird yoa games and how they blow hollywood's box office out of the on tech know, >> i landed head first at 120 mph >> a shocking new way to treat brain injuries >> transcranial direct stimulation... don't try this at home... >> but some people are... >> it's not too much that we'ed fry any important brain parts... >> before you flip the switch, get the facts... >> to say that passing a low level of current is automatically safe,

is not true >> every saturday, go where technology meets humanity... >> sharks like affection >> tech know, only on al jazeera america

>> my name is elenor and for the last 25 years i was bernie madoff's secretary. >> an unimaginable story of betrayal. >> they lived this incredible life. it just never occurred to me that they were living on the dime of the clients. >> greed... >> bernie was stealing every nickel but he wasn't trading anything. >> ... and entitlement. >> you took my grandchildren's future away from them. >> the collapsing price of oil is sending shock waves throughout the world. balancing their budgets could face serious turmoil. and while you would think that lower oil prices would be great for americans the news isn't all positive for us either.

joining me to talk about the consequences of this fairly sudden drop in oil rices is john kingston. john good to have you with us. >> thank you. >> oil prices dropping looks great, we see the prices, $630 million a day america is saving compared to what we're paying back in july. that could mean a lot for families if the prices remain low. sounds good. is it all positive? >> i would say for the u.s. on balance it's all positive. for the number you would want to look for me what are net u.s. imports, you take u.s. crude imports plus u.s. product imports, very small amount to canada and you minus exports and the u.s. imports 5 million barrels a day. the price of oil drops that is

overall stimulative for the country. >> on the other hand you have states that are dependent on oil, texas, north dakota, are those places going to suffer? >> north dakota which is almost exclusive an upstream operators is going to suffer, unlike texas, texas is dependent somewhat on natural gas prices which have fallen nowhere near the price of oil. an oil state. they have been racking up pretty significant oil surpluses. >> not anymore. >> but it's not like they went out and extended themselves to some incredible degree. and also it mat may be this is a chance to have them have a breather, not just for the oil but for the citizens in general. >> one of the things that last led to all this is this boom in shale production and fracking in the united states, we're extracting this oil that in the

old days might have been too expensive but with oil prices getting as high as they got, we're seeing a bit of a slow down in the permits that are industry. do you think it could hurt, this part of the industry that's economy? >> first of all i think i would disagree with you on one point. in 2008, 2009, really early 2009 is when u.s. production started to take off. and that's not because of the price. yes, i do think the higher prices of let's say 2006, 7 and 8 allowed some capital to go into this industry but ultimately this is a technology story. the story of fracking which is an old process and horizontal drilling which is also somewhat not as old but older process, you put those two together and you have the shale revolution. but almost every significance analysis i've seen is for 2015 all it will do is slow the rate of growth not actually cut production. >> what about green technologies?

once again, some of the technologies that when the investment is large to create these industries is the fact that oil prices have been so high. if oil prices drop making oil more attractive is it going to be harder to develop industries that we may well need big time in the future? >> there are two types of green technologies. there's one to produce electricity, wind and solar, competition against natural gas or competition against coal. if oil drops significantly which it already has it will weigh on those prices. but it's an electricity story, you've got renewable standards in many states, i don't know that's going to get shane, now you get to the transportation side, the chevy volt and tesla et cetera, already the chevy volt -- >> making less attractive.

i want you to answer a technology question, the russians are saying their economy is going to go into recession, the ruble is near historic lows, bask cases like venezuela that depend on oil, nigeria, do you think these dropping oil price are going to hurt those economies even more are going to create some global economic chaos? >> i don't know about global economic chaos. the one you have to watch for is venezuela which already is of those countries you mentioned certainly in the financial shape. they have totally mismanaged their oil industry over the last 12, 13 years. you go back to the strike i believe in 2002, they decimated the workforce of the state oil company which had been considered one of the world's finest oil companies and now it's kind of a joke. they have managed their production on one side of 2.2

million barrels a day which i consider amazing. one thing that might boost the price would be a clam t cal drop. that is the country you have to watch out for the most. >> the head of the imf says this is going to be good for the economy, but most of the countries are going to benefit from it. us. >> thank you. >> coming up nasa's major new leap in space exploration. but first the entertainment industry is obsessed with box office numbers but video al jazeera america gives you the total news experience anytime, anywhere. more on every screen. digital, mobile, social.

visit aljazeera.com. follow @ajam on twitter. and like aljazeera america on facebook for more stories, more access, more conversations. so you don't just stay on top of the news, go deeper and get more perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america.

former fbi special agent ali soufan. >> if that specific information was shared with to the fbi agent 911 could have been stopped at its early stages. >> the ethics of torture, preventing terrorism and combatting isil. >> islamic state, their strategy differs from al qaeda because for the first time now they are controlling land. >> every saturday join us for exclusive, revealing and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time. >> only on al jazeera america. v.

>> nasa is about to take v. one of the first big steps of putting a man on mars. the orion sais craft is on spacecraft is scheduled to take a maiden voyage. while the mission sounds simple enough if successful it may herald a new era of space exploration for nasa and the u.s. joining us from philadelphia, dr. derek pitts, derek good to see you. this mission sounds like something that nasa has been able to do for decades now but what separates it from what it's already done? >> while the business of launching satellites or other satellites into space is something that nasa does on a regular basis antonio, what is really different about this is this is the flight test for the next manned vehicle, the next

crew vehicle that nasa is going to use for beginning its explorations out into deep space. this test flight is going to be the reentry of nasa of the serious business of putting missions. >> this is fairly limited, orion, the flight isn't being launched by the rocket that nasa hopes will send people into space for greater exploration some day to mars. so what can they learn from such a limited experiment? >> they can learn a tremendous amount. even though the launch vehicle isn't the same, the capsule, they have to test the pressure integrity of the vessel, they have to test all the electrical systems, the guidance systems, and most importantly they have to test the escape tower, they

also have to test the heat shield because the heat shield will have to withstand 4,000 degrees of temperature plus of reentry, and they also have a very, very complex system of parachutes that will slow the descent of the spacecraft, there is a lot going on in this, that nasa is going to be testing, to make the next steps for crew-worthy for flight not too long from now. >> looking at the pictures i can't help but be reminded of the early gemini capsules dropping into the ocean on their way back in. but obviously this is a far more modern technology. so what's the next step after this they do this, what comes next? >> so the way nasa actually describes this is that although the shape looks reminiscent of the apollo program, everything

else about the capsule is new. here's what's next. they do the flight test tomorrow, everything goes successfully. they use this as the pace upon which they build the next editions of this making their way up to a crew-ready flight capsule that they can actually use for the next flight test. that next flight test in 2018 right now is planned to be a sir couple navigation of the moon -- circumstance up navigation of the moon. followed by a couple of years layered with a ren day vie rendezvous with astronauts using this capsule right nearby at the moon. >> the man would be to actually land on it and the capsule can't do it. they at an still haven't develoa lander that will go with that capsule. >> you're absolutely right, antonio.

a whole new level of technology. this becomes the vehicle that gets crews out to space but what happens after that? we will need all the infrastructure that will allow them to land on the surface of an asteroid, perhaps going to moon and to mars, we need all the other technology to prepare for a spacecraft that could allow a fairly large crew to make the long trip to mars and we need all the infrastructure down on the surface of mars also to be able to support them once they get there. so this is just one small step in a much larger plan. and we'll keep our fingers crossed that everything goes well tomorrow. >> and among the things that they need when it comes to that infrastructure is a habitat, a place for the astronauts to be. because again it's not capsule. if they're going to mars it will take months so they need somewhere else to spend their time. >> you're right, that has to be

built along with the spacecraft. although this spacecraft even though it can hold up to six astronauts, is not the journey, the absolute minimum is six months to get to mars. so you need a much larger space, something along the lines of what we have going, at least a portion at international space station to give astronauts plenty of space to move around and be comfortable on such a long trip. >> it took eight years from president kennedy announcing being able to land on the moon to neil armstrong landing. why is it progressing so slowly? >> after the apollo missions we lost our focus for what should be achieved in space. the goal was achieved in the apollo missions, to beat the russians. without anything to do after that we had no real direction of

what to do next. couple that with the fact that there was no longer good strong support in congress and no definitive path put forward by the office of the president. so this has been a slow start. but the realization is that if we want to maintain our superiority in space exploration we really have to get ourselves back on track with making it possible for crude explorations of near space and deep space using the infrastructure that nasa can build to make this kind of thing work and if we can get the support we need for that including the funding, then that means that we can continue in that position of superiority and space exploration. >> we'll see how this goes. derek pitts, it's good to see you. that's it for now. thursday on "consider this," higher faster stronger. redefining what the body can do. the conversation continues on our

website, aljazeera.com/considerthis. we'll see you next time. >> tonight new york city is on edge after a grand jury decided against indicting a white police officer in the death of an unarmed black man. eric garner, you're tuning in to special coverage here on al jazeera america. at the time when america is gripped by the shooting