off what commercial is already doing and moving forward. in the nuclear propulsion area it's pretty much us alone piring it. there isn't yet a private sector play-action for that class of rocket but we need to keep investing in the technology and take the work that was done back in the 1960's and take it that next step. because we know a lot more about crom systems now. computers are much more sophisticated. we can take some of that and more of it forward at the -- move it forward at the right pace. but this isn't something uniquely needed for us. it can be shared. >> this is key, again, not trying to did it all ourselves and trying to be smart about it. one of the challenges is the ability to store lidge -- liquid hydrogen. it's not any good for cryo general -- it's not only good for cryogenic storage, but for thermal too.

we're trying to take the common pieces today. >> yes? >> i have several questions, but we have a break coming up and people can be thinking about them. in relation to doing things in the past and then kind of putting them on the shelf, it reminds me of the h.l. 20 derived from the boar 4 photograph and a lot of wind tunnel tested and it was part of a program and it was put on the celestial. jim benson bought it and now plark is doing it again. 'm just wondering if at tables was a program one time and now it's back in another program developed by as vegas, bigelow.

just several days ago we had a ant thinker leave us, john heubolt, and he was a great rogue model for me and i hope that some of the thoughts that i come up with can in some way mimic what he's been able to do. at the moon we had a free return trajectory, and we modified that once the s.b.f. was working. we were always in a relatively close lunar-earth orbit. and apollo 13 indicated that we could probably come back. i don't believe we have that capability in the trans-plars injection with the fly-by free return that is an acceptable solution, nor do we have a rescue ability. why don't we do like many other

industries do instead of one big large thing that could fail? why don't we have two small things like fighter airplanes, they fly in formation. if one can't do the job, the other one can. sure, you could do them but leave a staging orbit at five pliles formation difference or 10 miles. now, wait a minute, don't be so stupid, why don't you put them together in the staging orbit and have them fly out. now you can jettison the one that fails and continue to do the job if you have two crew modules? on the subject of crew modules, into mars aero break orbit? does it have the ability of doing that? when i look at what i need at

mars, i fleed landers, and landers are capable of aerobraking and transporting people from one position to another and bringing back people. i don't know who is here from look -- lockheed but i got to ask the question, why do we need or -- -- orion in mars orbit? i really don't believe that that's the case. i have may have had another question. well, i guess we did have the idea of wanting to have a launch vehicle and then a larger labity at -- habitat. once we have the larger lab i tat we can put the people in the launch vehicle. why can't we put them in the large vehicle and a landing vehicle just as well as in orio flmplet?

let -- orion? let me leave it at that. >> i suppose yes or no is not an option? [laughter] >> we can try. i would say first of all on expandable, we're going to look at that on space station with beam in 2015. we're going to look at expandable technology to see what advantages that gives to us. it's reported to have better thermal conditions, the larger volume allows you to put water in for better radiation. that's a good thing the to bus' point, we're looking at what we call evolveable and modular architecture for mars. so it's along the lines of what buzz is talking about. we may preposition a habitational module around mars ahead of time and do a rend he is rouszurk rendezvous with

that. that's your return vehicle so instead of looking at a single monolithic kind of mission we're looking at, we call it evolveable where we position pieces up front and also call it modular because we're trying use similar components. can we take advantage of the flal satellites around mars and use those in the mars architecture and use a piece of those for what we are trying to go do? we're looking a lot at high elliptical orbiters. we're starting to take a different aprosme toward mars than we have before. our classic missions were more apollo style in a way where we launched everything in a campaign in a year. sent the armada of space craft you saw toward mars. i think we're going to do that

over a period of years. we need to all start thinking in maybe a different way so it's not a single mission but really is this pieoneering aspect. how do we move human presence in? once you are looking at it for the long term then you invest in some things that mimet actually take longer to do but are more sustainable. >> last word, pleick? >> i think what -- you know, well said and we're going to get there this in a sustainable, affordable way and we know the stecknology is important and that's why we have the investments we have underway and you will continue to see us make those investments over the next 18 months in a number of key areas. >> gentlemen, great talk. thanks for your attention. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> on the next "washington journal," bob cusack and jim

kuhnhenn. then, josh gerstein on the implications of data collection and primbacy. and a talk about the separations of the international monetary fund and we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter the "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. a number of live events to tell you about tomorrow. over own c-span 2, at 11 a.m. eastern, indiana governor mike pence will discuss his proposal for expanding health care covering, an alternative to medicaid. and later in the day, missouri senator claire mccaskill holding the first of several roundtable discussions not -- on fighting rape and sexual assault on college campuses the

panelists include survivors and leading experts. ive at 2:00 eastern. >> telecommunication policy had been been -- not been reformed since 193 will so there was really a compelling fleed in 1995 -- need in 1995 to begin a process of telecommunication reform. at that time up basically had boxes. a box for broadcasters, a box for telephone companies, a box for long distance, you know, cable, satellite, and our view was we had to come in and try to eliminate the lines of demarcation and promote compstigs, believing that with -- comple -- com pelt television, believing there is would be plor investorment and consumer cloice and in0ization and fortunately i think the result has proveous -- proven us correct and that's exactly

what's happened. >> whether the 1996 act was written we were largely focused on telephone service. whether local or long diskansas -- distance. to some extent we focused on tv , cable tv service but the primary focus was what we called pots, plain old telephone service. today the landscape is fundamentally different. the f.c.c. has managed as well as it can without clear direction from congress about how the transition from the era of telephone service to the time when everything is delivered over the nint -- internet should take place and in my mind the f.c.c.'s done a good job. >> evaluating the 1996 telecommunications act with two of the house members who helped write it. monday at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span 2.

>> this week on "q&a" our guest who discusses his career in political activism and , "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state". ost: ralph nader, in your new book you start off the book and introduction by saying when of king about the genesis this back i remember the days working in my family's restaurant. you start that way? guest: because we were opposite of these opec style factories and down