of room to grow. maybe there is still a lot of potential. charles: all right. that's a big theme of the week. you are spot on. jim, courtney, thank you very much. let's call it the c.p. effect. this is the highs since the opening, since the bottom fell out of the initial rally. liz claman, i did it again. cheryl: cheryl casone, actually. we will get to liz claman in just a few moments. we have a lot of breaking news to get to. we are t-minus one hour, 33 minutes to witnessing history as spacex gets set to become the first commercial space company to launch humans into orbit. that is if mother nature plays along. you are looking at live pictures of cape canaveral, florida, where it is raining at the moment. but the countdown clock has not stopped ticking. two american astronauts are scheduled to blast off from american soil for the first time since 2011 which marks the end of the space shuttle era.

liz will be along in just a moment to help us cover all of this today on fox business. nasa astronauts robert behnken and douglas hurley strapped into the crew dragon capsule one hour ago and just minutes ago, as you can see, there is the hatch door of the 27-foot tall capsule now closing, actually. this is pretty exciting stuff. we are watching them get ready to go. again, about an hour and a half until this launch happens. we also wanted to bring you this. fox business was the first to broadcast -- the first broadcast crew to visit elon musk at the first spacex headquarters way back in august of 2008, where he revealed the original version of the dragon capsule. yes, that was liz claman that took you on that tour. while liftoff is scheduled for 4:33 eastern time, multiple times during this hour we will take you live to cape canaveral for every development regarding this historic launch, again, monitoring these live pictures and of course, moments ago, seeing that door close. spacex is not the only company

taking an historic flight today. zip line has officially been granted faa approval to deliver life-saving medical supplies, specifically blood plasma via drone, believe it or not. the launch is today. the ceo of zipline is going to join us in a fox business exclusive. and the future of brick and mortar colleges is in doubt as the covid-19 pandemic takes its economic toll. the ceo of online textbook aj digital education disruptor chegg going to be here on how many colleges and universities might fail if their doors do not open this fall. and what a day for the markets as we head into this final hour of trade. markets gaining a bit of steam, nearing session highs. the nasdaq joining the dow and s&p 500 in positive territory after being in the red most of the season. the dow is up 343 right now. the s&p up 26. nasdaq is up 30 points.

we have got now 48 minutes to go. the closing bell is coming up. let's start "the claman countdown" right now. cheryl: breaking news. come on, you know you want to be there if you could. if we were invited, we would of course want to be there. president trump is expected to arrive at cape canaveral at any moment to witness the launch of spacex's falcon 9 rocket with the crew dragon capsule topping it off to mark america's return to human space flight. we saw that video of air force one landing just a few moments ago. the president's got a full agenda during this hour. he's going to get a tour of the nasa crew quarters, then is going to take a tour of the orion capsules and get a briefing on spacex's demo mission 2. we will follow his spacex

movements throughout this hour. we are watching all these live pictures coming to you right now on your screen from cape canaveral, florida. but today's historic event, more about the business visionaries who, through sheer will, have moved space exploration into the hands of private companies beginning with kind of the man of the hour, really, spacex founder elon musk. now, sir richard branson's space tourism company virgin galactic which just went public in october, there's the stock for you up 6% today, looking at that company, another part of this corporate space race, if you will, and then you've got boeing, whose starliner capsule lost out this time to spacex for today's flight. they had a series of mishaps that has pushed it a bit further out of nasa's orbit. now, separately, the aircraft maker announced it is planning to lay off more than 6,000 employees this week. that is the cost-cutting move really coming in the middle of this pandemic as the devastation continues for the commercial airline business.

there is boeing's stock, up about 2.25% right now. we are watching boeing. again, they also got funding from nasa but that launch today is spacex's to take. the spacex sister company tesla, lowering the price of its electric vehicles in north america and china about 6%. this is a bid to boost sales which had dropped during the pandemic and subsequent lockdown. tesla, as you can see, is flat, up just a fraction there. we love to give the excitement of the spacex launch credit, but the dow showed straight from the hills of the global stimulus deluge, i want to bring in liz claman. she is ready to go. it will be a really fun hour. this is so exciting. liz: i was watching nasa tv. that's why i wasn't ready at the top of the show. i'm all excited about the spacex launch. as you know, i was there 12 plus years ago. it is so exciting. folks, you see the clouds there.

don't get too excited. because maybe there will be a delay. hopefully the sun will punch through but there it is. the falcon rocket with the crew dragon capsule capping off the very top. we will keep dipping into this picture, i promise you. any development that happens, we are right there. in the meantime, we have a pretty big development globally. you could argue that the dow is so strong right now, up 333 points, because of this gigantic i guess you could call it a huge stimulus push. japan, let's start with them, unveiled a $1.1 trillion set of stimulus measures and then you've got the european union announcing a bigger than expected recovery fund that could be worth up to $825 billion u.s. on top of all of that, and knowing what our fed has already done, here's the whopper, the st. louis fed president james bullard gave to our own edward lawrence about what will happen, what he thinks will happen after

the current second quarter which he sees as the worst quarter ever. listen. >> i have often said that the main impact here in the second quarter and the third quarter very likely, right behind the worst quarter will be the best quarter of all time. liz: okay. so from worst to first. to our traders, who are already first with us. guys, i will start with you, teddy, is this a sign with all of this stimulus that we will see a clear investment runway ahead? >> well, it's never quite clear, liz, but one thing we do know is it's always been a mistake as long as i have been in the business to fight the fed. in this case, we also can include the central bankers from around the world. the fact is when the fed is in an accommodative mode, and we saw this after the financial crisis of '08 and '09, it went on for a good six or seven years, when the fed is

accommodative, it's usually a very positive backdrop for the equity markets. it's never a straight line, but the fact is the fed creates its underlying bid for equities for different reasons for different folks, but it's a very positive thing for the market overall. liz: everybody accuses me of always looking at the dark side of things. here i am, yay, it's a free runway and teddy says well, you never really know. which is true. let me bring in this issue. the hong kong protests, 300 people were arrested, phil, overnight and i think that as you look at the situation and a possible sort of, as henry kissinger put it, foothills of the cold war restarting, and this type of scene again, you got to tell me if what teddy referenced, because you never know, might be sort of the dark cloud here. >> i think it is. it's the greatest risk to the market. i can tell you that right now. i don't want to spit in the wind, i don't want to pull on superman's cape, i don't want to

mess with teddy, but you know, listen, this is the only thing right now that i think can slow us down, really, seriously, because listen, i look at all the stimulus we got over the last 24 hours from the bank of japan, from europe, the eu and the united states. they are acting a lot more quickly, a lot more decisively than they did during the financial crisis, right. and that to me suggests we will have one of the best quarters ever. flip back to china, hong kong, very much a concern. are they going to be able to separate this from trade? we don't know. mike pompeo today said hey, guess what, hong kong is not going to get that special trade status anymore. they are going to be treated just like china. they are no longer autonomous anymore. so this is really going to raise the political pressure and we don't know how china is going to react. but i will say this. at least the united states is not alone. the entire world, you know,

europe, the free world, is looking to what's happening in china and they don't want to stand for it. so there's going to be sanctions. how this plays out, we don't know. liz: all i can say is let's beat everybody today with this spacex launch, if we can make that happen. we won't have to worry at least when it docomes to that space race. we do want to just mention the nasdaq punching back in and out of positive territory after having lost all the gains earlier, then falling more than 100 points, 195. so we are kind of excited about all that's going on here, if we can hold on at least for the bulls, we might see more green on the screen. closing bell, we are 50 minutes away and make that an hour and about 23 minutes before the big launch, history to be made in the next hour, but it is not just that space x rocket with two astronauts on board that will take flight today. zipline, we told you about this company, it got the green light

from the faa to deliver life-saving blood plasma and drugs via drone here in the usa. they have already been doing it in africa. the ceo is here to tell us about the maiden voyage today. it's a fox business exclusive when "the claman countdown" comes right back. we are live at cape canaveral. don't move. [ sigh ] not gonna happen.

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liz: breaking news. nasa and spacex are not the only ones granted a go for launch today. zipline, the world's only national scale on-demand drug delivery company also taking flight today and over the past weekend, in the u.s., after getting official federal aviation approval to deliver critical medical supplies and ppe to hospitals, combatting covid-19. their first official mission taking place in north carolina. no, that location is not lost on us and the value of it. zipline cofounder and ceo keller rinaudo joins us live in a fox business exclusive. keller, the last we spoke to you, you were preparing for this. you have already flown about 1.8 million miles in african nations. you have delivered everything

from blood to rabies vaccines but now you are doing it in north carolina. tell us where you are and we are looking at the video right now. how is it going on this first couple of days? >> obviously we are really excited. i'm at our distribution center outside of charlotte, north carolina now. this distribution center was set up over the last few weeks. our partnership with a big health system here is really around delivering diagnostics, ppe and eventually treatments and vaccines for covid-19 to a wide variety of health facilities in the greater charlotte area. we are doing all this with fully autonomous aircraft that can basically deliver instantly and ten times faster than traditional. liz: i was talking about the fact that it's not lost on us, the value of it being in north carolina. of course, the wright brothers and their first flight in north carolina but tell me what that moment was like, and we do have video of it taking off, what it was like to actually make a

drone delivery in the united states. >> yeah. i have to say, it's obviously a little bit surreal. on one hand, it is not as new for us as a company as you mentioned, we have been operating for about four years at multinational scale in other countries. at the same time, we are a u.s. company and this technology was built here in the u.s. so it's obviously incredibly special to finally have an opportunity to use the technology to serve people here and i think also, obviously we are in for a long and tough battle against covid-19 and this is a really good time to be using new technology to combat that kind of a threat. it's quite clear to us that during a time of national pandemic, it's a really good time to be exploring new ways of delivering medical products, using robots where there's no chance of transmitting the virus. liz: yeah. i'm glad, because contactless is very much a part of what i think people will look at and say this is great. not only to reach rural areas with things like blood plasma or

covid testing, et cetera, but it's really fascinating to me na this is happening concurrently, your maiden voyage is in the united states, with what's going on at cape canaveral. we have this fixed camera down there where elon musk and spacex are launching the first crew dragon capsule with humans in it, the first launch of course of a commercial operation. business is very much at the heart of what you guys do, and what elon is doing. so you've got to talk to me about how persistent you have been and how there were moments where just like he felt, that you might have felt this is never going to work. >> yeah. of course. i think that to be honest, from 1910 to 1950, or even 1960, '70, there was a huge amount of innovation in aerospace and a lot of that came from amazing coordination and partnerships between public and private

organizations, between the federal government and private companies, and so incredible new airplanes, incredible new spacecraft and obviously during most of my lifetime we actually really haven't had that. so we are incredibly excited by what spacex is doing, finally getting us back to manned space flight, such an obvious and hopeful future. in the same way, zipline is trying to ensure we continue innovating with aircraft and autonomy and bringing new modes of transportation, new modes of flight that can add a lot of value, that can save lives and that's going to be a really big industry globally. we want to make sure the u.s. doesn't fall behind in that new industry. liz: we know what that's like. we fell behind in the space race rather recently, but today, if this all goes off perfectly and we pray it does, at least for spacex, we will once again not have to depend on russia, for example, to get our astronauts up into the international space station. congratulations to you and the team at zipline, keller.

thank you. keep us posted on the good work you're doing. >> thanks so much. talk to you soon. liz: great. thank you so much. keller is, of course, the cofounder of zipline. closing bell, folks, we are about 41 minutes away. we are at session highs for the dow jones industrials, up 366 points. s&p is up 28. yeah, i'm getting all excited. what can i say? as new life-saving technologies take flight as you just saw, it's the end of an era for one of america's biggest innovators. after 140 years, ge officially shutting off the edison light bulb, selling off what's left of its lighting unit to savant systems for an undisclosed sum. ge's shares aglow on this latest cost-cutting measure, up 7%. $7.28. then there was one. up next, charlie breaks it on the insider trading target still stuck on senator richard burr's

back and his team's latest line of attack to thwart the legal arrows being fired at the former intel committee chairman. stay with us. look, this isn't my first rodeo...

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liz: they are strapped in, two astronauts about an hour and eight minutes away from making history. liftoff of the spacex falcon rocket carrying doug hurley and bob behnken. okay. let me just tell you, they are going to the international space station, if the weather is cleared. nasa officials have to see a window clearing and as you look at the radar, it is moving but you can see from the picture on the left that there are still dark clouds. that would not be considered a decent window here. once they do take off it will take them about 19 hours to arrive. they will dock and then of course, they will demonstrate

activities. both of them have flown on two previous shuttle flights. let's see. doug is a native new yorker and bob is from st. ann, missouri. these guys are just heroes. we are very excited as they remain perched atop the crew dragon capsule. nasa in partnership with spacex, of course, have undergone thousands and thousands and thousands of training hours. we are keeping an eye on this. elon musk, as you know, if you were watching nasa tv which of course i was obsessed with and i have got it right here. i have all kinds of laptops in front of me so i can keep my eye on it, is there. probably very nervous because he founded this company in 2002 and it will become the first commercial space company to ferry humans into space. all right. let's get to this story. the department of justice yesterday announcing it was dropping charges against three senators accused of insider trading, meaning trading or

selling stocks before most of us knew exactly how bad the coronavirus crisis was going to be. but noticeably absent from that list, senator richard burr, who still remains under the microscope. charlie gasparino has exclusive new details on how he is now i guess looking to clear his name. charlie: yeah. last week we said he was target one on the list. the other candidates or other three targets, dianne feinstein, senator inhofe and kelly loeffler, were way down on the list. this thing was largely focusing on burr. that's what happened. before we get into this, i have some breaking news from my democratic party sources. by the way, there's a lot of democrats on wall street, these guys work directly with the biden campaign. here's what they are telling me about the vp list. it's kind of interesting stuff. i hate to throw you a curveball but this is breaking news. ten vp candidates are being fully vetted. what they say right now, kamala harris is the frontrunner.

that comes after biden's recent black voter flub, if you recall what he said on the charlamagne tha god show. that is basically making biden rethink he needs an african-american on the ticket to make up for that flub. it was a pretty bad flub. amy klobuchar still seen as a favorite of the establishment. the clinton dems want her. they think she's good legislatively, she ran a great campaign. she's running a close second but kamala harris, if you were in a horse race, this is in front. there's a lot of names on the list, obviously. elizabeth warren has been talked about, probably not going to happen because the dems would lose a senate seat. gina romando of rhode island, i don't follow rhode island politics but what i have been told, she's very good at handling the coronavirus in her state, take-charge person, considered very competent. she is now moving up on the list. but again, it looks like it's harris at the top, right now following that flub, and

klobuchar at number two. let's get to burr. this is fascinating. as i said last week, burr was target number one and the reason why is simply because he traded his own stocks. these other senators apparently had advisers doing it or they traded, the facts and circumstances surrounding these other senators including kelly loeffler who i knew from the stock exchange. we weren't exactly the best of friends when she was a p.r. person at the stock exchange. as i said to you, that was a weak tea case and they did the right thing, they dropped it against her, focusing on burr. here's the thing i'm getting from people close to burr's defense team. they think they have a good case with him, too. yes, he did get private briefings. yes, there's a notion that maybe he might have tipped off his brother-in-law who sold stocks before the pandemic really hit. sometime in february. but, this is a huge but, what he received at that briefing wasn't materially different than what we knew about the coronavirus.

people were talking about how bad the coronavirus could be to the economy and to the world in january. i think that's what they are going to argue. they are also going to argue that just from a purely, you know, structural standpoint in terms of what is insider information, that type of congressional briefing is not misappropriation as it is defined by legal statute. he didn't steal information from the companies. he got a private briefing which maybe had some level of detail, then sold stocks. again, those private briefings, were they materially different than what was out there. i guess it all comes down to an interpretation of the stock act, that was that recent act that legislation that basically wanted to rule out congressional people both in congress and in the senate from trading on stocks following private briefings. that's where we are right now. they think he's got a good case. one other thing. kelly loeffler is looking for a clean bill of health not just from the doj who announced it yesterday but also from the s.e.c. my sources say she's likely to

get that as well. again, not a -- i have no horse in this game, this race. the case against her was absurd. okay? bottom line. back to you. liz: charlie, thank you very much. we are watching a very strong market right now, two days in a row. look at the dow jones industrials, up 375 points. the s&p back in the green, up 28. nasdaq, back in the green, up 32. so aiming skyward, of course, as we wait for the big spacex nasa launch. 4:33 p.m. eastern time. we are one hour and three minutes away from that. in the meantime, the covid-19 crisis lighting a match on brick and mortar universities and colleges. up next, in a fox business exclusive, the ceo of chegg, the online textbook and education star of silicon valley, is here. what higher education must do to

extinguish the coronavirus flames. and tune in to the america works together town hall. stuart varney tomorrow is the host along with dave ramsay, ken coleman and chris hogan. send in your questions to investedinyou@foxbusiness.com. that's 11:00 a.m. only on fox business. let's peak back in on spacex's first manned launch, the now famed crew dragon capsule, poised atop that huge rocket. oh, boy. to infiniti and beyond. "the claman countdown" is coming right back. don't go away. we've got our eyes on cape canaveral, florida. business has. and their financial well-being. it's evident in good times, with decisions focused on the long-term. and crucial when circumstances become difficult. that continued emphasis on people - our advisors, associates, clients and communities gives us purpose, strength and a way forward.

today. and always. the story where the chances are low, and the cost is high. the sacrifice is real. it's all around us. but this isn't a story about how tougher times beat us. this is our comeback story. the time when we rally and come from behind. the time when we defy the odds and get back to work while the whole world watches. yeah, this is your comeback story. and when it's time to come back, we'll be ready.

liz: fox business alert. president donald trump and first lady melania are right now at nasa, cape canaveral, touring what are called the orion capsules at this very moment. they just toured what are called

the crews area where they live and sleep. we are now about i want to say 56 minutes away, 56 minutes away from the historic spacex mission that will send two american astronauts to the international space station. very important to note as we look at this rocket, that is the falcon 9 rocket that's already, according to elon musk, taken about 20 different flights. his whole dream started back in 2002 when, of course, he decided he wanted to make i don't want to say cheap but less expensive reusable rockets. he did suffer, this was hard. he went through catastrophic failures of the falcon 9 over the past 18 years. the dragon, he created that. we have been watching him work on this for close to 20 years. so this is truly, as he put it, a dream come true, one that he actually admitted just about an hour ago on nasa tv that he really didn't believe was going

to happen. so as we watch this and we await more video from the president, who is of course getting this inside tour of nasa's area there, we get to this story. there are, as you know, many victims of the pandemic. there's the human toll. thousands of lives, millions and millions of jobs lost. well, now covid's wrecking ball is crushing america's ticket to upward mobility. a college education. some u.s. universities say they will go bankrupt if they cannot reopen in the fall. but let's get to a company that is smack in the middle of all of this. chegg, publicly traded educational technology company that rents and sells online textbooks and provides online homework help and courses, mainly for college students but also high school. the stock is up 60% quarter to date as online education skyrockets in the time of the pandemic. let's bring in chegg's ceo, dan

rosenzweig. pardon us, we're all geeked up. it's a big day i'm sure there as well, right? >> it's a big day. i met elon back when he was founding zip 2. i have known elon for a long time. he is greaas great as everybody thinks he is. this is a big step not just for elon but for america. space and exploration and these are the things that make our country great. i'm super-excited. as soon as i'm off i'm going back to watching it. liz: yeah. reigniting the dream of space. we got one eye on that and the president's touring. we have one eye on you. what a rocking business you have had, not just quarter to date but year over year. i remember way back in the day, when you were starting and you were heading it up, i have to ask you right now what the pandemic has been like for you as we now watch some of the smaller more liberal arts

colleges around the nation who don't have huge endowment funds say that they may go under. what does that mean to a company like you and to how you feel about students in this day and age? >> well, look, we are a student first company. you have been a follower and fan, so thank you, of the company for ten years now. you know, we always believed when we started out to do this that more people were going to have to learn more often, they would do it online, it had to be less expensive, had to be more personalized, more on demand, and be supportive and put the student first. chegg is now a completely online platform that puts the student first. we help them with homework help, master the subject, get an internship, think about their future in terms of how to get a job and we will just keep adding services. so we are in a very good position because more people are going to have to learn more often or you know, the unfortunate part of the pandemic is of course, the deaths, which are frightening, being a new

yorker. and then the effect on small businesses. but to your point on education, colleges are small businesses. there's about 4500 to 5,000 of them. they work independently of giant state schools, really wealthy schools, and you have over half the colleges which may go bankrupt if they cannot get tuition revenue, get on-campus revenue, they don't have big endowments so the scary part is they are going to be doing everything they can to try to be as safe as they can but there is imperative for them to reopen. that's risky. liz: the whole thing is often, often prohibitively expensive. and tuition, as i have been watching it over the years, has jumped much higher than the rate of inflation. it's really quite horrifying. what you guys have done is made it a little more palatable. we wanted to show people the cost differentiation between whether if you were to buy a basic textbook, college textbook, econ101, biochemistry

101, what that cost is, the list cost for principles of microeconomics eighth edition, $249. your rental price, $21.49. buy it new, $130.99. used, $60. i'm going with you. i see that 2.9 million subs you have now, up 35% year over year. where do you go from here? >> it's actually become bigger than that. we have two parts of our business, which is the textbook rental business wie hich we invented which has been detrimental for the publishing industry but phenomenal for students. first we broke the backs of the cost of paying for textbooks which was ridiculous. we are on the eighth edition. it's not like these things have changed much since the second edition. but it allows them to sell new books. we replaced all of that concept with both online textbooks and textbook rental. our real business, though, is the online homework help, which we only, we haven't raised prices in ten years. it's $14.95 a month.

the student can master, they can get step by step solutions, they can get expert q & a, they can get live tutoring for 50 cents a minute on any subject for as little or as long as they want. they can watch 50,000 videos. we are helping students who don't have the support that wealthy students have get the education they deserve and need, and it's only $14.95 a month. as you pointed out, we were growing 32% a year, first quarter ended up 35% a year. second quarter, we are predicting it will be over 45% a year. liz: wow. all right. dan, we wish you luck. we like disruptors and we know there's a disruptor whom you are friends with that is right now probably chewing his nails. thank you, dan. we look right now at cape canaveral. again, the atlantic coast that but for elon musk and the company that he founded, spacex, as you see, there it is. the capsule, the dragon capsule with the two astronauts inside.

these guys are brave. bob behnken and doug hurley. doug was flexing his fingers earlier. he looked kind of totally calm, relaxed. bob was wearing an old school wristwatch on his wrist. we are going to come right back in just a minute but guess what's also going skyward? a dow jones industrials number of 448 points. we are going to get to a live on the ground update from cape canaveral when we come back. (music)

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that's it. i'm calling kohler about their walk-in bath. [ sigh ] not gonna happen. my name is ken. how may i help you? hi, i'm calling about kohler's walk-in bath. excellent! happy to help. huh? hold one moment please... [ finger snaps ] hmm. the kohler walk-in bath features an extra-wide opening and a low step-in at three inches, which is 25 to 60%

lower than some leading competitors. the bath fills and drains quickly, while the heated seat soothes your back, neck and shoulders. kohler is an expert in bathing, so you can count on a deep soaking experience. are you seeing this? the kohler walk-in bath comes with fully adjustable hydrotherapy jets and our exclusive bubblemassage. everything is installed in as little as a day by a kohler-certified installer. and it's made by kohler- america's leading plumbing brand. we need this bath. yes. yes you do. a kohler walk-in bath provides independence with peace of mind. liz: breaking news. we are 45 minutes away from what is expected to be a historic launch from cape canaveral, florida. president trump is now getting a launch briefing on today's historic spacex demonstration mission. they are calling it the demo2,

that will send two americans to the international space station on a commercially made rocket by spacex called the falcon 9 and they are right now at the neil armstrong operations and checkout facility at cape canaveral. after this briefing, they will move to the operational support building, number two, to watch the falcon 9 rocket blast off. let's listen to the president. he's there with elon musk. >> -- and this is something the first lady and i have looked very much forward to seeing and in a short while, it's going to be liftoff. looks like we're probably going to make it weather-wise, jim, is that right? >> we are a go for launch right now. >> that sounds very exciting. so i hope you all enjoy it. thank you very much. thank you for being here. would you like to say something? >> i want to be really clear about the transformation that has happened right here at the kennedy space center. i say this because i know bob has been the director of this

center for, what, nine -- >> 12 years. >> 12 years. there was a time in our country, mr. president, about nine years ago when the space shuttles were retired, and united states of america has since then had no access to space with humans. we have not had any access. and this area of the country was absolutely devastated. it was at a time when we also canceled the moon program. we had a great moon program that was under way. but because of the hard work of bob cabana throughout those times and now we've got great support from the administration, nasa's budgets in nominal dollars are as high as they have ever been, we are bringing america back as it relates to human space flight. as you said, sir, there was a day when there was grass growing out of the runways. but now we not only have the policy directive from the administration, we also have the

budgets to match that policy directive to put america preeminent in space, appointing the vice president to chair the national space council was a brilliant move that put us in a position for success, and so we are hitting on all cylinders right now. i want to be clear, today is a big day for the nation and elon, we're grateful for your labor of love that goes back a long time as well. so america needs to be -- we need to lead the world, sir. you put us in a position to do that and we're grateful. >> thank you very much. mike, would you like to say something? >> well, thank -- liz: you know, it's going to be hard to quantify, i must say, but how many young students or young kids who are watching this moment right now, how many of them will be inspired to be like these two very brave astronauts.

there they are. this was about an hour and 40 minutes ago or so, where bob behnken and doug hurley were strapped in to the crew dragon capsule and as we wait, we are fewer than 45 minutes away from what is expected to be this brand new frontier of space travel where an american company that was started by an immigrant, elon musk, who is an immigrant from south africa, comes here, gets educated here, and puts us in this quantum leap ahead in the space race. you know, this first private commercial company flying humans into space is very much a personal story for me. you know, as i watch all of this, nearly 12 years ago, i showed up at my fox business crew to an old warehouse in el segundo, california where we became the first television crew to see the original version of

elon musk's falcon 9 rocket and that, the dragon capsule, the original one. spacex founder musk told me he envisioned that maybe one day, if things went well, the dragon would ferry astronauts into space. i interviewed elon before, because he's the ceo of tesla as well, but i remember watching as he pulled up in his tesla roadster and drove right into the hangar and parked right next to the rocket. i was thinking this looks like a science project, little bit. i recall there were ex-aerospace engineers and former nasa scientists sketching out ideas on computers. and they were eating granola bars. i'm thinking wait a minute, what if a piece of granola gets into it? it seemed improbable back then but elon is one of those if you dream it, you can do it. that's the kind of person he is. they're rare but you want them on your side. because of his vision and persistence, today, if all goes well, america will have made what i just said, this quantum

leap, the likes of which only true giants know. we are coming right back. stocks are spiking to session highs. i bet it's on some of this optimism. dow jones industrials now up 523 points. we are coming right back. please stay with us. is a time for action. so, for a second time we're giving members a credit on their auto insurance. because it's the right thing to do. we're also giving payment relief options to eligible members so they can take care of things like groceries before they worry about their insurance or credit card bills. right now is the time to take care of what matters most. like we've done together, so many times before. discover all the ways we're helping members at usaa.com/coronavirus . .

liz: all right. as high as the dow is spiking, which right now is up 527 points, it does not reach the 230-foot tall falcon rocket with the dragon capsule that has astronauts in it. they are taking off at 4:35 p.m. nasa administrate tour james bridenstine told president trump that the lawn such still for a go. so is hbo streaming max.

how about that for a segue. it is making debut today, can watch it on apple tv, playstation 4, xbox 1, two giants of the industry have yet to reach an agreement with parent company at&t to carry hbo max. amazon and roku have yet to strike a deal to bring the app to their services. leaving fire tv and roku users a little less friendly. today's countdown closer says one of the companies set to prosper in a streaming world. he is not picking at&t. we have norm conway. conway, norm, give it to us. you like roku, why? >> we like roku and we also amazon and are looking really closely again at netflix. so i guess put me down in the mistake category in terms of how at&t is decided not to partner with those platforms over hbo max launch.

liz: yeah, would i think so, but roku has had such an unbelievable runup and you look at a company like that which over the years has just kept climbing. where do you see the upside there? >> well, i'm one of the many that several years ago misunderstood roku's business model. i thought of them more as a hardware company. over time and i've obviously owned them that opinion changed. i sigh them benefit from streaming. i like the advertising model they have as an offset or in contrast to netflix for example, and their no ad model. liz: do you think at&t will eventually strike this deal? do you get the sense it will happen? i. >> would be willing to bet that they are they are going to strike a deal with one of the

incumbent streaming platforms. as a consumer streaming media have the extra step having an extra app to open for hbo related context i -- reporter: closing bell rings] liz: got it. norm conley. there we have it. very much at the highs of the session. huge jump for the dow. up 551 points. stay tuned "after the bell" will be all over the spacex launch. melissa: 33 minutes to lift i don't-off. we're back above 25,000. second straight day closing above the 25,000 milestone for the first time in more than two months as a historic mission is about to launch at cape canaveral. how exciting. i'm melissa francis. connell: i'm connell mcshane. welcome, everybody, to "after the bell." it is an exciting hour we have ahead, if the weather cooperates in the state of florida. as for the stock market as