basketball. >> that's it for today. david will be back next week. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." this was the most visibility we had of any objects in the water and gave us the most promising leads. >> those promising leads are a positive sign. good sunday afternoon. i'm craig melvin. you're watching msnbc. today, search crews off the coast of australia have seen more than they have in the three weeks since flight 317 went missing. so now what? >> you can't get them to go home. they're looking for loved ones. mental toll is just having to sift through this and what they're finding. >> the number of missing in the washington state mudslide drops dramatically. significant news this afternoon in the grim search.

and in presidential politics, the push is on to put another bush in the white house but would jeb really want to move to washington? and he is not only listened but learned and now he is taking action. >> owner of washington's nfl franchise making a move to make amends with native americans but many say it is just not enough. and what if you could capture, capture solar energy in outer space and beam it back here to earth? it may sound out of this world but it could be a reality and it's today's "big idea." whole heck of a lot to get to this afternoon but we start with the latest on search for malaysian airlines 370. australian prime minister will visit. bill neely just got off an australian search plane that

reported seeing multiple objects in the ocean, more than that crew had ever seen of particular interest, we're told, to that search team, three large orange objects that measured three feet by seven feet. we are going to get a report from australia in just a few moments. now to the lathest on the dead lly mudslide in washington state. the death toll at 18. while the number has gone up, the number thought to be missing has dropped substantially. officials now say they cannot account for 30 people. that's down from 90 just yesterday. and one week after the disaster, those who lost their houses, their memories and their loved ones are still trying to cope. >> turn around to come home and it's all gone. neighborhood. why?

you know? >> that was volunteer oso firefighter who found his wife christina and his granddaughter in the rubble. jennifer bjorklund in washington. can we expect an update on the death toll later today? >> reporter: yes, craig. we can. in fact, officials are updating the media every day at 6:00 pacific 9:00 eastern at the end of the search day. they do have more bodies that have been pulled out of the rubble but they don't add those to the death toll until they can make identify cassications and blunt, they said they don't have complete sets of remans and used dna to identify some bodies from the pile. so yes, we expect an update on the death toll but the good news is safe and accounted for list, the well and safe list as they call it is growing.

>> okay. >> and that list of missing is now down to 30. craig? >> talking yesterday, the rain was an issue as it has been. what are search crews dealing with today in terms of the elements? >> reporter: the elements are being a little bit kinder. the rain has stopped. we expect to dry out in a few days but it left behind a big mess. the mud is recharged if you will and it is still like quick sand and very sticky and at least, at least the rain is not coming down anymore. >> jennifer, thank you. developing right now in paris, john kerry and russian counterpart are meeting face to face in the midst of heightened u.s.-russian tensions. the united states secretary of state and russia's foreign minister lavrov trying to hammer out a framework to end the standoff of annexation of crimea region. let's get to kristen welker.

what are some of the proposals on the table? >> reporter: well, craig, according to a state department official, some of the proposals that they are discussing include withdrawing troops from the border of ukraine. russian troops, having them go back to the bases, allowing international monitors into ukraine and also creating direct talks between russia and ukraine. of course, the big concern on the part of the united states is that russia is going to enter other parts of that country after annexing crimea and russia consistently said that is not their intention. the u.s. skeptical. we learned that secretary of defense hagel sent top nato commander breedlove scheduled to testify this week sent him back to nato headquarters in europe so that he could oversee the troop build-up, the russian troop build-up, citing a welcome

of transparency on the part of russia so obviously concerns running very deep. this all coming at secretary kerry, his rush yun counterpart, trying to hammer out a deal coming on the heels of president obama speaking with president putin on friday. the two men talking for about an hour about a possible diplomatic solution so that is the backdrop to these meetings taking place right now. secretary kerry and lavrov began meeting at 1:00 p.m. eastern time, craig. they have been meeting for quite sometime now. we anticipate that they will talk to reporters at the conclusion of this meeting. craig? >> all right. keep us posted. >> reporter: absolutely. >> thank you. the deadline to enroll for health insurance is quickly approaching. the deadline midnight tomorrow night. the obama administration says there have been more than 6 million enroll lees so far. critics still contend there are

problems. let's get to the brain trust. anton gun at the department of health and human services in the private service now. beth fuey is senior editor at s msn msnbc.com and tom davis from the commonwealth, cormer congress from virginia. anton, let me start with you. mr. health care himself. the deadline to enroll is tomorrow. there are a number of exceptions and some added after the hhs secretary said there would be no more. why has the administration in the simplest of terms kept extending deadlines in such a drib-drib fashion? >> the bottom line is when you have a start as bad as we had a start on october 1st, there's a lot of people that tried to do stuff to get enrolled on october 1 and weren't able to do it and last thing to do is deny the opportunity of coverage to wait for for years to get and so the

point is give the extension to those folks started the process and not complete it. but i want to make sure we say one thing to everybody out there that has not started the process. if you don't start the process by midnight tomorrow night, you're stuck for the rest of this year without having access to health insurance coverage so we don't need to mince words about this. millions of people are getting covered. 6 million now. we expect the numbers to rise over 24 hours. >> beth, anton acknowledged it there. we know. the rollout itself was plagued with a host of problems. five key obamacare delays, five. we'll leave it up for folks to note there. the white house may claim victory but there are concerns. the cost of premiums for some. have enough people, especially young people, have they enrolled? how long is it going to take for us to realize whether obamacare has been a success or failure? >> it takes a while. look. i think we go back to the view

of 30,000 feet. there's new entitlement, 6 million people accessed. this is huge. republican party wants to dial it back. still talking about repealing it. how can you do that now that 6 million people have care and did not before? it's just the same reason why you can't repeal social security. >> sure. >> medicare. >> once the tooth paste is out of the tube -- >> can't come back in. there's problems with the rollout and problems to continue to see and obamacare is there to stay. >> tom, is that the reality? have republicans accepted that reality by and large? >> look. we are still in full campaign mode. we have to understand this is a brand new entitlement. we don't know how it works out. we won't dmoe this for several years, if the cost curve is bent, how many people lost their doctors, new people come into health care they didn't have before. but this is going to be a continuing part of the narrative until november. both parties i think and we won't know for several years whether it works out or not.

>> let's pivot. you mentioned campaign mode and fast forward to 2016. tom davis, i'm sure you saw this there in washington. "the washington post" says influbt shl republicans drafting former governor jeb bush. tom davis, is jeb bush, is he the guy? >> well, i think it's too early to tell but with chris christie's issues in new jersey not fully resolved, i think a lot of us in the republican party, particularly the establishment, are saying, gee, we're nervous about paul or cruise or somebody to win nationally. >> they need an establishment guy? >> yeah. look, he was governor of florida. florida and ohio are two swing states they need to win to take the presidency and the bush brand, pluses and minuses but there is a financial organization around the country that i think is being to step up should he decide to get in. >> beth, you followed the rise of hillary clinton's political

career for years. how significant is this draft effort? >> can you imagine another clinton versus bush? sort of back to the '90s. jeb bush is a very, very appealing candidate in many ways for republicans but a fantastic report in "the washington post" said powerful insiders drafting him. same powerful insiders that drafted mitt romney and some of the same powerful insiders that drafted john mccain. there's a big -- >> these are the guys with the money. >> right. >> these are the folks that know whether a candidate is electable. >> yeah. but they haven't elected anybody yet. they have lost. so you have got the rand paul wing, the ted cruise wing and not really going to love this and told by the republican gray beards who to support and a lot of foment in the republican side. >> this is what co-founder of tea party patriots said on our program yesterday. >> each of the folks has we

weakne weaknesses. i don't think anybody has an appetite for a third bush presidency. i don't think we're looking for a dynasty. >> do you think the conservative wing will be able to shed out a moderate like jeb bush? >> i don't think they can shut him out. if jeb bush gets in the race, he is the best candidate of a decade. anti-republican and date and why they don't like him. when you have folks now looking at jeb bush, talking to jeb bush, good sign for him and rather than wasting the money and dumping it on newt gingrich, give the jeb bush and will be of significant bush fatigue factor in november if jeb bush gets do a primary process. i they good candidate, great leader, done stuff in florida. better than both his father and brother with the leadership qualities and could he win a general election? i don't think he can because the bush fatigue is very heavy. >> tom -- >> i think there's a clinton fatigue, too. >> this is when tom davis gets

back in the game. >> i don't know but -- don't wish that on me. but i would say this. they're both known commodities. you don't get anybody perfect in the diverse political atmosphere at this point. bush is from a key swing state and outreach to voters of the hispanic community. a great race to watch. >> we know that his mother doesn't want him to run. >> she'll vote for him. put that on the record. >> former hhs official, anton gunn, beth fuey and tom davis not running for president, thanks to all of you. coming up, could the tensions between united states and russia play out 6 in outer space in if they do, what would that mean for nasa? first, though, defense and offense in one letter. dan snyder's outreach and new strategy for washington's nfl team. alright, that should just about do it.

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he has been listening. he's visit i think 26 different tribes. he is working very closely with them and he is not only listened, he's learned and now he's taking action. >> nfl commissioner roger goodell talking about dan snyder, owner of washington's football team and added fuel to the franchibattle of the franch. the announcement he's starting a new foundation to help native americans. some are skeptical of snyder's motives. sports columnist tweeting this. i'll believe dan snyder is sincere about the mental and physical health about the native

american community communiwhen changes the name. let's just start with the obvious question here, wilson. is this anymore more than a pr stunt? >> i don't believe so at all. i think daniel snooider is reading from the jack abramoff book of how to deal with the american indians. they have no real foundation. i'm the chair of one that works in indian communities. you don't see a board of directors and there's no specific mission of the organization. so, you've also seen one other disturbing element, an executive director is hired that recently cited in an ig report, inspector general at the department of interior questioning misconduct with the contract with the united states. >> and the -- >> i think this is just a pli.

>> the name of the initiative, itself, washington redskins original americans foundation, why use the name that's caused so much controversy, why use the name in the very title? >> you know, i can't answer that question except to say i know he believe there is's nothing wrong with the name and the original americans, that seems like an original name but it also has an acronym oaf and seems appropriate. >> dan snyder cites support of native american community. how divided is the community over the use of the name redskins? >> i don't believe that you can point to real division within indian country over the issue. for over a decade, tribal leaders across the united states have been speaking out on this issue and saying, it is wrong. this is a dictionary defined racist term. and so, the leaders of tribal

communities have been saying the same thing for a long time now. it's now become more recognized among mainstream media and generally of the general public. but this is around for a long time so this is not a johnny come lately issue. >> wilson pipes, native americans advocate, wilson, thank you. >> thank you for having me on the show. folks in california are still on edge this afternoon. two days after a 5.1 earthquake rocked the los angeles area. scientists there say at least 155 aftershocks have rocked the area since. the damage friday night was fairly light. broken glass, some store shelves rattled and enough to keep anxiety levels quite high. seismologists say that the aftershocks could continue for days, perhaps even weeks. this is msnbc.

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changes the nature of what college sport is about and blows up america's iconic activities, i think it winds up in the supreme court. >> this's the view of ncaa mark president on the implications of that regional nation allay boar relations board wednesday that student football players at northwestern university should be considered employees. what does the american public think? well, nearly two thirds of those polled by abc news and "the washington post" before that nlrb ruling oppose paying college athletes. and would it make a difference to those watching sports? the results from an hbo "reals sports" poll 37% say it makes no difference in how much they enjoy watching the games and 37% says it makes them less enjoyable. northwestern said it plan to appeal that regional ruling to

the full board in washington. up next, a spokesman for the republican party getting in a battle over race on twitter. i'll ask him about the role that republican americans play in the party. we'll also talk about some other things, as el. this is msnbc. i dropped 2 balls, mom. eye on the ball! that's all it is. eye on the ball. that's a good tip. i'll try it. by the way, bill... this is delicious! so many grilled tastes and textures. and all the nutrition i need. go on. no really. top notch. (laughing) there it is - there ya go. new american grill from kibbles 'n bits... go together like... food 'n family. predibut, manufacturings a prettin the united states do. means advanced technology. we learned that technology allows us to be craft oriented. no one's losing their job. there's no beer robot that has suddenly chased them out.

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hi, are we still on for tomorrow? tomorrow. quick look at the weather. nice day, beautiful tomorrow. tomorrow is full of promise. we can come back tomorrrow.

and we promise to keep it that way. driven to preserve the environment, csx moves a ton of freight nearly 450 miles on one gallon of fuel. what a day. can't wait til tomorrow. crews searching for the flight 370 reported seeing several large orange objects off the coast of australia today. at this point, it is not clear whether those objects are actually related to the missing jet. meanwhile, in just a few hours, australia's prime minister is set to arrive at the air base where those searches are taking off. crews are racing to find the plane's black box recorder before its batteries die and it stops emitting signals to be detected. nbc's ian williams has the

latest from perth, australia. >> reporter: the busiest weekend in the search ever but ultimately very frustrating one yet again. today we had eight ships out there, nine aircraft. multiple sightings of roberts including what was described as four large orange rectangula rectangular-shaped something there in the sea and nothing to do with flight mh-370. two ships, a chinese ship and an australian ship, both fished items out of the sea but they, too, turned out to be flot some or fishing related items. monday afternoon, a bit of technology the u.s. hopes can try and trace the black box will finally be leaving perth on an australian vessel for a four-day voyage out to the search area. though, they won't be able to use it until they can massively

focus the search area which, of course, will mean finding some wreckage. now, the commander in charge of the pinger search operation mark matthews of the u.s. navy was on hand here in perth today and had good news and not so good news. he said he thought the black box could still emit that ping for maybe 15 or 45 days, beyond the initial 30 that a lot of us had been planning for. but he also warned that the search area is vast and that unless they get some real information that the search could take years. craig? >> ian williams for us from perth, australia, ian, thank you. let's pivot here and switch gears back home and argument on twitter. about a new black conservative magazine that argument turned into much more. the controversy start when the senior editor at "ebony" magazine dismissed the launch

with a tweet that read in part, i have already have drinking games in mind. when williams with the republican national committee tweeted he hoped that the senior editor could encourage diversity of thought, he said, oh great, here's a white dude telling me how to do the black thing. the part of the issue is williams to whom the tweet was addressed is black. the gop in a letter called for an apology and "ebony" said, quote, nearly 70 years ago this magazine began on the principle that as black people we are all somebody, we all count. thursday the spirit of this mission was disregarded by ebony.com senior editor lemieux in a personal exchange between herself and rnc press secretary williams. he joins me now. let's start there, sir.

are you satisfied with "ebony" apology. >> i appreciated the apology. i accept the apology full heartedly. >> why did you chime in on that tweet anyway? were you trolling? were you trying to bait her? >> no, no. i wasn't at all, craig. what happened is another reert said i want to learn more and attached many toe their tweet and then it's up on my radar and then when she said that response, i don't want to know more, she cc'd me on the tweet. i didn't go looking for a fight. >> you are a high profile black conservative in america. how's that gone for you? >> it is amazing the support of different people. even liberals supported me in terms of respecting the idea of diversity of thought. the fact i could have my own thoughts and don't need to be a democrat if i'm black and very important and very something i like to talk about a lot with people and the reception is terrific. >> has it all been ter nisk or do you get a fair amount of this on twitter?

>> occasionally i'll get somebody saying something stupid but i have to let it roll off my shoulders and continue to do my work and move the country forward. >> do you think that black conservatives typically get a fair shake in, you know, in the african-american and the mainstream media? >> well, i think it depends on who you are talking to. different reporters are different. i don't like to put anybody in a one monolithic category here and i think some people are mean to black skefls and sometimes people are understanding and most black people aren't republicans and why? how did you become a republican? what are the steps you took? so those reporters i love to deal with. >> one of the things that struck a lot of folks i think, she looked at the avatar and thought a white dude. does that happen a fair amount? >> you know, actually, that's the first time that's ever happened to me but changing av avatars. you don't know what will be there in a given day. >> thank you for stopping by and do appreciate your time. >> appreciate it.

thank you. >> okay. raffi williams, republican national committee. james peterson at lehigh university and also a msnbc contributor. james, let me pick up where we left off there with raffi. is there a bias against conservative african-americans in this country? >> well, i don't know if i would call it a bias. i think -- >> a skepticism. skepticism. >> you know what? there may be some skepticism, craig. that skepticism is rooted in the history of politics and also rooted in the current moment where you have a gop that claims to be reaching out to women and to people of color but when we look at the policy statements, rhetoric, doesn't seem like they're trying to genuinely reach out and i'm seeing imbalance in the swiftness with which those on the left apologize to those on the right and don't see that reciprocated when folks on the right say

outrageous things. let me say this, craig. if you're a woman of color and you are putting your opinions out there in public, particularly social media, you are subject to an inordinate amount of sexism and racism and some of the things that she is talking about here, the analogy made to the cockroaches and trolling you get of conservatives, that's the reality. we don't complain in public about those things but there are a lot of trolls, someone speaking from the left, you get conservative trolling and not to say that he's doing that but the response on that context, we have to keep it in the proper context. >> you mentioned the apologies that seem to come from the left more than they come from the right. why do you think that is? what's behind that? >> well, i think that our political discourse is kind of contaminated with negativity for a long time now. and in reality, when you look at

news networks and social media, there are a lot of conservative platforms that have a lot of aggressi aggressive, sort of aggressive minority and speaks out and really, really nasty sometimes and when you think about the ways in which different networks and different social media platforms have to adhere to corporations more conservative, you're seeing imbalance in the kind of apologetics we see coming from the left versus the right. at the end of the day we need to get poisonous discourse out of political discourse to have a healthy, respectful dialogue to address the serious challenges we're confronted with. >> what we don't have a lot of time to talk about is how so much of this happens on social media and how it's very difficult to express a point of view with any substance -- >> 140 characters. >> 140 characters or a blogpost or anything like that. one person says something, another person says something and then somebody else with six or seven hours out of the day to devote to tweets and things like

that, they chime in and then you have this. >> yeah. thing is, though, craig, people who have the biggest platform sometimes are those on the right. you don't see rush limbaugh, glen beck apologizing and you see folk on the left making those kinds of apologies and that's what gets really, really frustrating. anyone with an opinion in public is subject to people being critical. we have to inject respect and sensibility and humanity into discourse. that's for both sides and everybody in the conversations. >> this whole thing started over the mentioning of this new black conservative magazine that is going to be launched. is this a magazine that james peterson is going to read? is this a magazine to which you might subscribe? >> well, i doubt i'll subscribe to it, craig. >> what about the diversity of thought, james peterson? >> in my experience -- first of all, craig, in my experience those folk who are most

interested in diversity of thought are interested in it to the exclusion of other opinion. it's about all kinds of diversity. look at the kinds of comments that they have made over the course of their careers. have you seen ben carson apologize for comments about obamacare? armstrong williams apologize for former republican administrations? no, you have not seen that. while i'll read everything, that's my job here, the reality is in my experience, people who are only talking about intellectual diversity talk about it to the exclusion of other diversity. >> there are those that suggested, as well, dr. peterson, there are certain audiences that demand apologies and that there are other audiences that discourage those kinds of apologies or apologies in general. so -- >> there are. because i think, you know, the republicans have become very, very good at victim blaming and victim claiming. so they can claim victimhood very, very easily and

effectively in the different platforms and blame a lot of victims. how many apologies for the comments about rape and gender and women and access to health care? how many apologies of food stamp presidents? 47 pistons. the ways in which republicans dog whistle racial comments? did paul ryan apologize for comments of generation allay siness in the inner city communities? no. those of us on the left confused of ways of people on the left step out of line in terms of plit cat dolitical discourse ha apologize right away. all of us have to ent sbeer a discourse with a certain amount of respect and the issues at hand much more important than the political back biting of every day. >> professor james peterson, unapologetic on this sunday afternoon, thank you, sir. >> thanks, craig. today's flash back is quite timely since recent events collided with history.

here's one of the key headlines of this day in 2009. >> the president is putting gm and chrysler on two different paths. chrysler has 30 days to show an alliance with italy's fiat motors, can make the automaker profitable. chrysler could get up to $another $6 billion. the white house will spend 60 days remaking gm into a leaner company demanding concessions of autoworkers and bond holers and for the first time the federal government is endorsing the idea of using bankruptcy to clean up gm's massive debts. >> the auto bailout was one of the treatments. president obama and supporters pointed to it repeatedly, the success during the 2012 presidential election. >> osama bin laden is dead and general motors is alive! >> today, however, it's what gm

executives knew and when they knew it that's in connection. detroit automaker is sued over a recall concerning potentially faulty ignition switches that impacts 5 million vehicles. the lawsuit alleges gm knew about the problems even when it was in federal bankruptcy. expect gm's new ceo to be grilled when she's on capitol hill tuesday. up next, solar panel raining. that's the promise of one scientist. it is also today's "big idea," next right here on msnbc. you really love, what would you do?" ♪ [ woman ] i'd be a writer. [ man ] i'd be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot. [ woman ] i'd be an architect. what if i told you someone could pay you and what if that person were you? ♪ when you think about it, isn't that what retirement should be, paying ourselves to do what we love? ♪

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♪ ♪ [ female announcer ] with five perfectly sweetened whole grains... you can't help but see the good. 2013 was the third year in a row energy production from renewable sources beat out nuclear power in this country. renewable energy includes production from solar, wind, hydroelectric, geo thermal and bio mass. far and above the majority of energy in america, though, still comes from fossil fuels. but what if you could capture

solar energy, what if you could capture it in outer space and then beam it back to earth? sounds like science fiction. it's today's "big idea." naval research laboratory built and tested a module that would do just that. the brain child of paul jaffi, an engineer and researcher at the u.s. naval research laboratory. dr. jaffi, thank you for being with me. good to see you, sir. >> my pleasure to be here, craig. >> how ambitious is a project like this? it sounds pretty wild. >> yeah, i know, certainly it sounds like science fiction. you might say it's a bit crazy but there's a few crazy things you don't know how hard they will be until you try them. >> how would this work? >> as you stated, you collect the energy in space with a satellite of solar panels and send it down to the earth with radiowaves. you have a receiving station on the earth that collects the radiowaves and converts them back into electricity and the

massive satellite building would occur in space with robots? >> that's right. so, the module that we built a prototype of is an example of the kind that you would use to construct the big satellite. the module itself takes the sunlight and converts it into radio waves with a layer on top a solar panel and then the conversion electronics and then the bottom is an antenna and beam them to the earth. >> how can space solar toer, how can that power produce more energy than ground-based collectors? >> well, for one thing, you don't have to worry about nighttime or cloudy dais. on the east coast, we have had several days of heavy cloud cover and a satellite in space, of course, zruntd to worry about the weather, the sunlight is brighter. and it's in an orbit so it's you will illuminated year around.

>> could simplify military missions, as well and last longer. explain that. >> yeah. so when you have the satellite in space, you have flexibility of where to send the energy. if you have a base somewhere for months or a year, you can easily send energy to that and then when you move you can beam it to the new place. it could be useful for developing country that is don't have a lot of energy infrastructure or for disaster response operations where maybe power plants or lines are destroyed and install a receiving station. >> how close are we seeing something like this become a reality? >> so we have done some preliminary research, certainly it is a large-scale project. it is hard to speculate exactly how long it might take. some depends on the emphasis on research funding and what the political will is. with any large and ambitious project, you want to take some kind of step toward out because if you don't make any effort, of

course, you will never get there. >> who's paying for this? >> so the research that i did now concluded was paid for by an office of naval research through the naval research laboratory. >> so we all are. >> yes. it's -- it is the taxpayers and much like we fund research into fusion, which is another kind of high risk, high payoff energy source -- >> okay. >> it is incumbent on us to really check out the things and make sure that we're informed and we can make realistic decisions about the energy sources in the future. you stated at the beginning the majority something like 85% of our energy comes from fossil fuels and whether they run out in 10 years or 100 year it is fact is they are going to run out and we need to have something in place when they do to make sure that we can continue having energy. >> dr. paul jaffi, it is all quite fascinating. thank you for your time. appreciate you. >> thank you, craig. >> do you have a big idea making a difference? you can tell us about it on

twitter and also e-mail us, as well. there's the e-mail address right there. up next, more space. the space race, part two. how the standoff with russia could impact our interstellar endeavors. this is msnbc. this...is jane. her long day on set starts with shoulder pain... ...and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for... ...all day relief. hmm. [bell ring] "roll sound!" "action!" ido more with less with buless energy. hp is helping ups do just that.

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a short time ago train service was restored in chicago almost a week after that derailment at o'hare international airport. you're looking at video from monday. that's when an eight-car train derailed, jumped the tracks, and crashed into an escalator on the platform. 32 people were hurt. that train operator admitted to falling asleep at the controls. well, now we move to the outerspace and indications that the rift between the united states and russia could have an impact on the u.s. space

program. right now as they did this past week, u.s. astronauts can only go to and from space on russian rockets. the last u.s. manned spacecraft, atlantis, was retired in 2011. i want to bring in long-time nbc news space correspondent jay barber. jay, is the u.s.-russia joint venture on the international space station, is the venture in jeopardy? >> it could be, craig. but first, before anything could happen on it, there's a lot of layers of that onion to go through. there are 15 nations involved in international space station. of course, the united states did the overwhelming big part of building it along with russia. it was built by the two. then when the space shuttle was grounded, and we no longer had a spacecraft of our own, they had to go and sign a contract with russia to fly not only american astronauts but also the

obligations this country had to fly the european astronauts and the japanese astronauts. now, for president putin to get mad enough at president obama to stop flying american astronauts, he probably wouldn't stop flying the others. he would probably continue to fly. and that's about the only position that they can get in. most people, as they demonstrated here last week flying up there with an american astrona astronaut, most people feel they're long away from that. but it worries people, craig, because senator john glenn, he's a space icon, as we all know. begged president obama not to cancel the shuttle, to keep at least one flying until we had another spacecraft, the orion, ready to go. we're still talking a couple years away before that could happen. >> it would seem to me, jay, that this is all quite ironic. you know, the u.s. space program

itself, a product of the cold war. you've covered every manned u.s. space mission beginning with allen shepherd's 1961 suborbital night. talk to me about the irony, the irony that this country is now dependent on russia for manned space missions. >> craig, every astronaut, you know, they just couldn't believe what was happening no nasa because they fought so hard to regain the lead from russia with allen shepherd, as you said, flying may 5th, 1961. if allen was alive today, i know he would be beside himself. i just finished writing the book "neil armstrong: a life of flight" because we lost neil about a year and a half or so ago. he and i were writing a couple of reports at that time for n nbcnews.com. anyway, we were talking about doing a book for 20 years. this is the main thing that neil

wanted to do as well as all the other astronauts. he wanted to make sure that we had the equipment and we were out in front to not only explore space 200 miles up, but to go back to the earth/moon system. he felt we had to do this in increments in order that we could continue to move out because, as we all know, craig, one day this spacecraft earth that we're on will not support us anymore. so if the human race is to survive, we got to go elsewhere. it only makes sense to nail down how to live in the earth/moon system and then go on out to mars. this is what neil armstrong wanted to do. we've got all of that in the new book coming out in july. >> all right. that's a good spot to leave it. nbc's jay barber. always good to see you, sir. thank you for your time. >> craig, you take care of yourself. >> thank you as well for joining us on this sunday afternoon. i'll be back next weekend, saturday afternoon 2:00 eastern.

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thanks for disrupting your afternoon. i'm karen finney. in this hour, hopes for a peaceful solution to an international crisis in the forecast. how do you take health care away from 6 million americans? and how let's follow the money and meet the billionaire who's fighting to impose his freedoms on you. it's all coming up. >> obamacare has come a long way since all of the problems with the website. >> should they be spiking the football? >> 6 million people have signed up. that's before this huge surge. >> i think they're cooking the books on this. >> i checked the numbers this morning. it's now 6,563,000. >> the old system we had, i would have been forever barred from having private health insurance. now i'm not. >> look at what obamacare is really doing. >> for the first time in my life, i'm covered. i can't tell you how good that feels. >> very new developments tonight on the crisis in ukraine. >> secretary of state john kerry