as a reassuring defensive all nato is part because of what they see as the increased threat from russia and then of course you go to moscow and russia says well we've got all this sort of advance presence suddenly in the new countries of nato and we have to defend ourselves against that at which point nato starts talking about you remember the big or maybe not quite so big russian military exercise last summer which was completely hyped by nato spokesman and western ministers which turned out to have been a fraction oh they were too and of course mary these things these exercises are player now and still in advance they were made public observers are allowed to come again this hype here i mean also daniel you know what also on top of it here you have lethal weapons being sold to the ukrainians if you look at the the pentagon's nuclear posture review it discusses the possibility of

a first strike this is throwing away his entire history of arms control not only did they rip up the b.m. treaty they're actually even going further there is no interest in the west about a new start to intermediate weapons and their note there's no talking about that ok again this is one of the reasons why putin said what he had to say go ahead dan you . you know i think the the anti-ballistic missile batteries in poland and romania that you referenced earlier was also about enabling a western first strike prohibiting retaliation i think president putin said it many times before this is not about defense this is to enable all offense but you mentioned earlier you know hysteria and i think the u.s. is is under such a cloud of mass hysteria that i it's palpable you know this past week in italy there were elections where the non-mainstream parties did very very well and someone joked how soon until explained on russia well and today already has just

a day later played on russia by none other by samantha power by samantha power and here's here in italy are parties that were elected on an anti immigrant anti immigration policy why might it be concerned about immigration because samantha power herself was in favor of regime change in libya and syria and elsewhere that created the refugees so no matter what happens no matter the fact that power is behind this problem no it's all russia and that's what's happening in the u.s. it really is a mass hysteria in this country ok twenty seconds george i mean you know no matter what the president of russia has to say i have to say it's going to be taken into a specific context go ahead twenty seconds before we go to the break. yes always specific context then because it's always assumed that russia is an aggressive power in it because it's the that is the propaganda trope and therefore there is no

context whatsoever in which you know what is it that what the west is to provoke this danger from resources let me jump in here how we're going to we're going to go to a hard break and after that hard break we'll continue our discussion on russia's new weapon state with us. it's been almost fifty years since we've had human beings on the surface of another planetary body and i hope that we could actually put together an international lunar exploration initiative much like we have the international space station consortium and together the countries of the world cooperating with the private sector could afford to get back into real space exploration and i think that would that would create a real

a lot of excitement. you're calling say that. something is good in kosovo oh but for barcelona. but for crimea. or whatever. either the principle is good or the principle is bad has to be apply equally and that is. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing some of brushes. new weapons. ok not to go back to mary in london and i to ask all of you basically two questions

in this part of the program. how the russians implicitly at least acknowledge that there is a new cold war and very importantly mary you said you watched it. putin big reach out his hand to say there's still time to sit down and talk instead of all of the bluster ok because i think we are in a new cold war i think we're going to find a new term for it because it's not ideological it's like more like a nineteenth century great power struggle but at least in those days you recognized and had respect for the other powers that's not the case today so those two questions really new cold war and can the west reach out and say and sit down with the russians on these issues go ahead mary well my personal take on this is that actually we're not in a new cold war we're in something rather different we're in more of a sort of psychological standoff i think and i'm quite reluctant to refer to what's

going on as a new cold war but i think implicitly you could read into what putin was saying and his approach that from russia's perspective it is treating this at least a bit like a new cold war and one of the things that i thought was so interesting you pointed out that he was calling for talks and saying you know there's still time for talks but one of the one of the things i found quite telling about that was that he accused the west and the americans in particular of refusing to talk after the application of the a.b.m. treaty and. numerous as russia said. expressions of interest in holding talks with the americans the americans said no we're not going to talk and there's the clip of putin speech which was broadcast which was singled out a lot by russia watchers including by me where putin says well they didn't listen

to us before they'll listen to us now. and i think that was in a way it was as it seemed to me that it was less a. threat than it was an expression of being very keen to be seen as an equal player to want to sit around the table with the americans on an equal basis and that the development of these new weapons a new entitlement to sit at that table and that the united states has to listen you know well daniel i mean you're in russia is a very important nuclear power let's all face it ok we have an entire history of arms control agreements because because of the possibility of. of a mistake a miscalculation that's why we have these agreements but they're running out running out in two thousand one hundred twenty twenty one and then we will have none of these things here so i think it was prudent to reach out. but will the

united states do it because considering the environment particularly in the united states i mean. trump has his hands tied i mean this is on these issues he cannot do anything go ahead danny. well i think it was a certainly a brilliant move by the neo cons they put in put him in a box they have prevented him from fulfilling any of his campaign promises if he moves or even says putin without spitting. there he goes again these on putin's payroll so it is a disastrous to the question of whether in a new cold war i would almost say and i'm not the first who said this that we're actually in a new hot war during the cold war. the better minds in washington were doing their best to prevent an active conflict because russia is literally a threat as you point out because it has nuclear weapons in this new hot war with russia where russians are dying by the way you have people that are pushing usable

nukes we need usable nukes in europe to fight another war with russia this is it's no longer the dr strangelove that would make fun of these are the people that are in power now so i think it is a far more dangerous situation than it was in the sixty's because george in the during the original cold war there was a code of honor you don't fight each other you use proxies and as daniel has pointed out we maybe we'll find out the truth because the pentagon is pretty economical with the truth will find out if they are actually intentionally targeting russian contractors in syria you know george let me ask you something. i know the americans would hate this idea but why don't we have a global arms control agreement on nuclear weapons so you bring in the chinese also bring in the nato countries that have the bomb india pakistan israel it doesn't it admit it but it has it in everybody does know that and even north korea now see the way it is global and everyone knows the rules of the game but the americans would

never allow that to happen because in the case of the neo-cons negotiation is appeasement go ahead george. yes yes you know i think that's an excellent idea at all it was always a very strange that the only participants in these nuclear disarmament negotiations were used to be like the united states and the soviet union whereas britain and france and china or the other nuclear powers they were just of. out of it they were they weren't considered but i and i just going back to what daniel said i think that. he's absolutely right i mean that this is a more dangerous situation than was the case during the cold war because during the cold war i mean there were the crises in berlin there was a crisis in cuba but other than that it never looked as if the united states and the soviet union would actually get into a shooting war i don't think that one can be so blind as

a today the situation in ukraine i think is is quite serious and the americans seem quite happy to escalate this they are in syria again situation is quite a dangerous there americans are shooting at russians any one of these could spiral out of control so the front lines of this new. cold war are now much closer to russia and. another much more dangerous so and i think which wasn't true during the cold war the original cold war there is a feeling among policymakers in washington that russia is basically very weak and that in any armed confrontation between america and russia america would win pretty easily and that the then the russians would have only one resort which is to escalate and you clear weapons but they're there they already think the russians would risk doing anything to so foolish and therefore they're awful just simply back down and accept the u.s.

had germany and realize that there's no way in the world that they can ever rival the united states and i think this is very dangerous some kind of calculation. and like this going on in the among policymakers mary weigh in on that because you know you know i get maybe i'm just way too close to it because i live here and lived here for a long time. and i you know i go and see the victory parade. commemorating the end of the second world war it's very moving it's very real and it touches everyone in this country and my sense is that reflecting on what george had to say. if the americans press hard enough the russians will defend itself by all means available that's not a bluff and and no president i don't care who it is of russia would stand for that whatsoever this is you know it's really you know we've talked about this involved i

think was two years ago is that there are so few real russia watchers left because when the cold war came to an end they defended it then you became i can eat you specialise in arms control specialist but me you know not no hard core russian when i see people in western media talking about russia they have no idea really what they're talking about that it's all. exaggerations or character churches and i these are the people that are influencing policy this is scares me because the russians don't bluff when it comes to existence go ahead mary. no i agree with you that russia doesn't bluff and i also agree with the other two contributors that. there is a sense in which the situation today is more dangerous on the ground in conflict areas such as syria such as ukraine because of the absence of the sort of rules that existed during the cold war. but i think in two respects things are slightly

different one of them is that the scale is so different and the feel in the two in the two capitals is so different even in washington you have this incredible frenzy against russia but it's against russian interference in all sorts of things in a sort of cyber dimension in a propaganda dimension it's not really about assault or really just going really good and i think there's something else that i'd like to add to this which is that yes congress and the cold war republicans in particular have contained donald trump they've limited his room for maneuver in the most effective way they've been able to do that but i still think that if you look at the responses from donald trump in person and bloody mayor putin in person when they talk about each other they still retain i think at the back of their mind

the hope that one day it will actually be possible to have proper talks and to have an improvement in relations and you can see that all the invective on both sides at least until now has been delegated to if you look on the russian side it's been to quite warlike members of the duma. and people are the ones who make the warlike comments against the united states and there's something similar happening from try. team as well so that at the moment i would say that trump important have held themselves quite effectively above the fray and also communicating which with each other quite regularly by phone now obviously there are a lot of people who don't like this. and the publicist before it is. is not huge but i think that still there's just this slight that could be

an improvement ok danny let me go to you know give you the last word here with these new weapons and weapons coming from the united states and russia the time for a leader it used to be you know up to five five to fifteen minutes to make a decision now it's getting down to a minute or so and so if the americans are so terrified of you know leaving the light on it night and looking under their bed for russian spies it doesn't give me hope at least in this environment there were any safer go ahead. it is astonishingly dangerous and as your previous speaker pointed out americans seem ready for war look lindsey graham the senator from south carolina said just a couple of days ago a war with no north korea attacking north korea not a big probably be worth it be worth it reminds us of madeleine albright when she talked about five hundred thousand dead iraqi children he believes a million dead north koreans and south koreans would be worth it this is the mentality of people ok i'm going washington not very good fight along on where

a depressing note to get i did have the impression that the inmates have taken over the asylum many thanks to my gets to new york london and lake jackson and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember. this baby and. much eighteenth vote with your remote to zante for special coverage of the russian presidential election exit polls opinions real time results monitoring and much more. under-performing the stock market oh my god blackstone one arbitrage opportunity

you have brought a mucks just self i suggest you short your money into you of disarray your own corporate balance sheet and then blow your brains out of live t.v. they give us all a good kind of fun to experience for the financial predatory class up. close and welcome to worlds apart sending humans into space has long required a national and even international effort to provide all the necessary financing and technology but space x.

is recent successes in hauling freight into orbit claim to challenge these paradigms can privatized space services make space exploration cheaper and easier to discuss that i'm now joined by geoffrey hoffman an american astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the massachusetts institute of technology and dr hoffman it's so great to talk to you thank you very much for your time. pleasure to be here now the world is still mass murder eyes by space-x. recent falcon have a launch it was certainly very spectacular after that some people compare it to the launch of sputnik or the landing on the moon i wonder though as an engineer do you think that was really such a major technological breakthrough a major milestone in the history of space exploration. no i mean it is evolutionary but what space x. as a whole is trying to accomplish i do think is revolutionary. the idea of

strapping together three first stages to make a more powerful rocket is not new the the u.s. has the delta heavy rocket which has been flying for many years now. so that technology is not revolutionary however what space x. has accomplished is to make it a lot more affordable. the rough cost of a delta heavy. it's hard to know exactly but it's in the order of two hundred fifty million dollars the falcon nine the falcon heavy can carry. twice the payload of a delta heavy for about one hundred million dollars and so it really is changing the paradigm of how much it costs to get into space and and that's the revolutionary aspect i think of what space x.

is doing but dr hoffman i wonder if it's perhaps too early to say that because i think the same arguments were made about the shuttle program that it's to be usable that it's going to be so much cheaper than let's say the soviet comparison bedamned i got from your own lecture is that shuttles turned out to be much more expansive because all the ground operations and how they were service perhaps not very efficiently i understand that this is a house basics markets it's technology at this point of time but can we really rely on those figures to be proven in time well as you're absolutely correct that people are waiting to see can space x. maintain the very aggressive launch schedule that they have and reuse a lot of these first stage rockets which they've been recovering because that's

what the price reduction depends on in in large part so yeah it's still early days what i can say though is what happened with the shuttle it was a very complex vehicle amuse very capable it was the most versatile spacecraft probably that we'll ever see but it took a tremendous amount of care and maintenance there were thousands of people involved in every shuttle launch and that's where the money goes for people salaries and what space x. has tried to do is to simplify everything to make it possible to turn around a launch to reduce the first stages without thousands and thousands of people so far they've been successful but as you say it's early days and we have to see can they maintain the pace and do it. wall they keep. you know hopefully a perfect roy ability record now elin mask is known to be very good at marketing

this is how he sells his very expensive car speech i would argue are not very practical a driving but a very good for boosting your self-esteem i wonder if he's also trying to sell not so much the product by the imagined experience associated with it because when you think about all the footage and the video that god from doc launch a it's more about projecting it certain ideas certain dream rather than marketing the actual capacity that he wants to bring to the market no i wouldn't agree with that i mean anybody in the space business was concerned about is the rocket going to work. you know it. was really important to be able to show that they could launch recover the boosters and get the payload into orbit. the fact that instead of

just using a bunch of lead weights as because you know you have to hear it wasn't carrying any real payload for money i mean no nobody was launching a satellite on this but you still have to carry a payload with the equivalent mass of a large satellite and so the fact that he decided to launch his red tesla with a you know a a mannequin astronaut in it that that was obviously marketing and very clever and and the general public got a real thrill out of it and you know the idea of c i one of the things that i hope comes out of of a lot of what's happening in the private space market these days because we have to remember space x. is not the only one it's an extraordinary time that we're living in we we have a generation of billionaires who are space nuts they have a vision you listen to bigelow to to musk to be zos their vision is

that some day many many people human beings are going to be living off the surface of the earth and i think that's really what's what's ultimately motivating him there there's easier ways to make money than than developing a rocket company but he but he has a vision they're not the only people who have vision and i think just because they're billionaires i don't see why dive vision has to be given so much attention compared to for example your own vision because you have been into space five times you you completed four spacewalks you you know how. fix the hubble telescope and yet what people would remember after this launch is an empty tassel a car with a dummy auster not rather than for example you or somebody else who's doing every you work there in space don't you think that people perhaps need to appreciate not

how glamorous the space is but how lebaron is it is you're misinterpreting the purpose of the falcon heavy launch was not to put a tesla into orbit the purpose was to demonstrate that this new configuration which is the first time that space x. has ever tried this and they want to be able to use this to launch heavy satellites when you're when you have a new rocket you have to demonstrate that it works. that was the critical part of the launch and it was totally successful you know he decided to make it a little sexier by putting his red tesla as the payload but that was not the purpose of the launch now when somebody wants to put a really heavy satellite into orbit they can have certain confidence that the falcon heavy configuration has demonstrated that it it can work successfully and

hopefully that means that he'll be able to launch heavy payloads both for private companies and for the government because this is important for nasa and this is a lot of heavy payloads and if you can launch it for a third of the price of what you would have to pay on the delta heavy you can get a lot more science done now dr hoffman just a few moments ago you mentioned this new vision that mosque and other space not as you called them have and mr mosque in particular is talking about spacefaring civilization and and multiply military species i suspect this is actually very similar to what year hurried. when you were growing up as a boy in new york drawing all those rockets and that it was more than sixty years later and yet we ask humanity i still not there do you think mr musk will see his vision very bold vision i have to say realized in his lifetime well when he talks

about millions of people living on the surface of mars i think probably not that's that's a very expansive vision whether or not that will occur in the lifetime of anybody who's alive now i i honestly don't know. but the falcon heavy now has the capability of taking payloads to mars rather significant payloads and. you know one of the exciting things that happened is that nasa as a space agency. originally kind of was reluctant to get involved with the private sector but. that was i think one of the successes of the obama administration's space policy was that they basically directed nasa to work with the private sector for lower thor bit launches and for taking crew up to the

international space station and so this idea of a public private partnership. i really look at it as being the key to success for the future. we're not going to have another apollo program whether for the moon or mars i mean apollo was a very special time we had a cold war going on between the u.s. and the soviet union space had been identified as one of the areas in which you could demonstrate the superiority of your culture and you know the the russians were launching things first and then the americans and finally we got to the moon first but at a tremendous cost i mean at the height of the apollo program over four hundred thousand people were working on apollo it was for about two years nasa was getting almost four percent of the u.s.

government's budget that's not going to happen again so nasa if they're going to be successful in space exploration has to learn to do it not apollo style but affordably and i think therefore there's a lot to be learned from the public sector and by working with the public sector and using these developments particularly the rockets in the spacecraft developed at a much lower cost than nasa has previously been paying for launches that might make it possible on a much more limited budget that we then we had during apollo to get started with real space exploration again that's what i hope will happen dr hofman we have to take a short break but to be will be back in just a few seconds stay chant. a

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