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 tuned. you could you want to do you know what i noticed was playing in one million people then . he killed people even.

now in the lens and the tooling to choose a few that he's running and that's. your call and say that. something is good in kosovo oh bad for barcelona. but fall. i mean. it's a whatever. either the principle is good or the principle is bad has to be apply equally and that is.

welcome back to worlds apart geoffrey hofmann an american astronaut and now a press pass a department of aeronautics and astronautics now dr hoffman just before the break you mentioned that space x. already has the capability off transporting cargo and perhaps humans to mars i wonder if figuring out the chance for it capability is enough she commands very icy and dangerous voyage to the raft planet oh absolutely not i mean there's a whole slew of things i mean. radiation how we're going to deal with the radiation exposure. just something simple like keeping food

viable for three years i mean there's all sorts of things that nasa is looking at that problems that need to be solved to say nothing of the. you know the psychology how are we going to keep people healthy physically. i really think it's important that we first go back to the moon it's been almost fifty years since we've had human beings on the surface of another planetary body and mars is very hard which isn't to say that the moon is easy but it's a lot closer it's easier to get to you can come back relatively quickly if something goes wrong. and many of the things not all but many of the things that we have to accomplish on mars we could test out on the moon i think the moon would be an excellent test bed. and with the exception of the united states up until the

recent change in policy every other space faring nation in the world russia included is wants to go to the moon. 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 it's interesting you say that because i'm sure you know that back in two thousand and seventeen nasa and the russian space agency are off cos i'm assigned an agreement to look into building the first lunar space station and that's at the height of well very poor relationship that we currently have at the in our two countries so why do you think the space exploration was somehow

on the fact that by all of these political matters that divides our countries i think it's actually cause for at least some optimism not not just talking about what we would like to do someday in the future with the moon but the current activities in the international space station where the two biggest players are the united states and russia. as you say we have our problems on the ground but i think it's very. you know it's a cause for optimism that still in space we were each keeping up our parts of the bargain and we seem to be getting along quite well if there is some hope that maybe get off the surface of the earth and we're not arguing about little pieces of ground in the middle east or wherever in the world. that we can actually behave more like members of the whole human race and work together you complained about

the shortage of budgets that go into space programs and i think that's even more the case for russia than for the united states but i wonder if those financial constraints actually provide for these call parading experience because the russians need money and the americans need the the russian equipment our technology for the time being do you think that's a good range meant that does it provide any synergy apart from. each of the sides getting what they want. it provides a certain level of safety again looking at the space station we have to oxygen generating systems we have to water production systems and they're different. and if one somehow has a design for fault and breaks down. you have a certain level of safety by having different types of engineered systems and this would be particularly the farther away from earth you go the more important the

reliability becomes on the space station if we have a failure of a piece of equipment we can send up into something else to replace it or if the worst comes to worst it's pretty easy to come back to earth in a hurry you go to the moon and you're much farther away from help and if you're going to mars forget it there's no no way if something breaks they they can't send you a spare parts so to have to differently type engineered systems. really provides a lot of extra safety she now a few minutes ago you're sounded very excited about this infusion of private money into space exploration and i think many x. parents believe that somehow private money can come to almost topstitch national budgets as far as the space program is concerned our space programs are concerned

do you believe that's realistic to expect that you can continue exploring space. by the use of private money rather than relying on state budgets nasa is budget is is a little over nine to around nineteen billion dollars a year that's a lot more than even you know jeff bezos puts about he said he puts about one billion dollars a year into his blue origin company he sells a billion dollars worth of amazon. stock and he's got plenty of amazon stock to sell the real question is what's going to motivate them. the you know you're not going to make a profit by exploring mars and the government does it not to make a profit but because traditionally the governments have sponsored scientific missions but if you look at the history of exploration. you know earlier on in

previous centuries there was a lot of private sponsorship of exploration again what i hope will happen is that we'll have a mixture of public private investment in this. how much the private sector wants to put into it depends on what they will do you know do they need to make a profit from it i mean jeff bezos has said you know he he runs the amazon business because that provides enough money for his space company he's he's motivated by his work in space is not really to make a profit but when you look at what's happened over the last few years it has truly been revolutionary we have seen a tremendous amount of innovation just the idea of being able to reuse parts of the rockets nasa tried to do that with the shuttle economically it was not a complete success but. you know nasa was never on its

own probably was never going to develop the ability to reuse parts of the rocket or even to substantially bring down the cost up until space x. came into the game and nasa launches were all with the united space alliance which was a monopoly created by boeing and lockheed. and they had no real motivation to reduce the cost of flights because they were getting their contract basically they had no competition and they were getting a cost plus contracts so. the more the launch costs the more profit they've got now we have real competition and rocket companies all over the world not just not just boeing and lockheed but ari on space for us cause most of the japanese the indians the chinese everybody is concerned can we compete with space x. so it's really been revolutionary and it's led to

a tremendous amount of innovation which i do not think we would have had if it had just been the government involved now i heard you seen one of the interviews that private companies such as basics of blue origin are willing and able to take more risks than nasa or any other government agency do you think government should play any role in determining the pair of amateur yourself though the risk just is a matter of public safety because i think you would agree that launching a vehicle into space represents certain basics no no they do in order for space exploration any any or boeing or lockheed i mean any any private company needs to get government approval before they launch and of course the government approval is mainly to make sure that they don't hurt anybody on the ground we don't want rockets falling on the land near big cities or anything and they need to get

the right now it's the federal aviation administration that has authority to approve commercial launches when it comes to launching people the first people who are going to get launched in the space x. and boeing is also making its its own private capsule space capsule there or they're going to be launching nasa astronauts and there of course nasa will determine the safety. conditions that have to be met and i think for as far as the fine the general public if nasa decides that these vehicles are safe enough to fly now. sastre noughts than probably the federal aviation administration which frankly doesn't have a lot of expertise in human spaceflight will say well if it's if it's good enough for nasa then it's good enough for us and and then they'll give approval to fly other members of the public you know we talk maybe about the birth of

a space tourism industry still early days we don't know if it's all going to happen if it's going to be successful but this is the long vision middle lot of these companies have you know. bigelow will put a space hotel up there and space x. will launch paying tourists to go up and it won't be inexpensive especially at first but there's plenty of people who would love to go into space and they may have a chance in the next generation they want to go into space even if that represents a certain risk to their lives i want to ask you specifically about calculating those human risks because i heard from a number of facts paris. especially after the bill loss of the shuttle columbia. has become more risk averse than before but on the other hand i've also heard many american astronauts and russian cosmonauts say that they understand that space exploration is this is an inherently dangerous time to taking and they are ready to

take certain calculated risks for the sake of common good do you think the agency especially in the united states is balanced enough bit to been you know protecting people and providing a certain a space for. exploration to reach is always be still always contain a certain degree of frisk where we would we would like the next generation of human space vehicles to be safer than the shuttle than the one one big thing there is that they will have a launch escape system which the shuttle did not have so had there been a launch escape system. the challenger astronauts would have survived even though their shuttle was destroyed when the shuttle was designed it was designed with so much redundancy that people managed to convince themselves that it would be safe no matter what happened and therefore since you could always get the shuttle back the crew would be safe as well well that turned out not to be the case and i don't

think we'll ever make that mistake again. when it comes to the question of will tourists be able to take those risks well you know tourists pay seventy five thousand dollars to get a guided climb up mount everest and people have died you know tourists have died on and on mount everest. so i think it's clear at least a certain subset of wealthy. people who are looking for new experiences are willing to take a certain level of risk and there will continue to be a certain level of risk in spaceflight. it's not yet as safe as flying in an airplane but you know in the early days of aviation there were a lot more crashes it was a lot less safe than it is now i suspect the time will come i don't know how long it will be in the future when we don't think it's any more dangerous to get in iraq

at than to get in an airplane but that time is not now and i don't know when that's going to happen so there were there will be a risk in spaceflight but i think there are people who are willing to take those risks while i you're certainly one of them dr hoffman we have to leave it there but i really really appreciate your being with us today and sharing your thoughts and your expertise your experience and job yours please keep the conversation going in our social media pages as for me hope to see you again same place same time here on both a part of. it. under-performing

the stock market oh my god blackstone one arbitrage opportunity you have brought amongst yourselves i suggest you short yourselves up borrow money into you of disarray your own corporate balance sheet and then blow your brains out on live t.v. they gave us all a big kind of fun experience for the financial predatory class i'm. joined me everything on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. the new global economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education being supplanted by the right to access education low it's higher education is becoming just another product that can be bought and sold but it's not

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politicians the media the kremlin's possible. speculation. given the red carpet treatment. to the cities.

in the russian capital our top story a former russian spy and his daughter a believe being poisoned with according to police and you remain unconscious and in critical but stable condition according to the home secretary being found unconscious in the british city of seoul. the country's top counterterrorism officer says the get it deliberately. this is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration robert nerve agents will not be providing credit information. about the exact substance that's has been identified well let's give you some background. he used to be used to serve in the russian military intelligence service but in one thousand nine hundred five he was taken on as a double agent by the u.k. russia court in two thousand and four and later convicted him of revealing the

identity of russian secret agents in europe he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison however he served only four years before being released as part of a high profile spy swap with the u.s. he was later flown to britain here's what the home u.k. home secretary said earlier today in parliament. it's a brazen. act but if we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on the first occasion well that was her updating the house of commons on this case and she cautioned against speculation and not just speculation in the media it's something that now the politicians are doing as well many of them have pointed the finger of blame squarely at last and some are even using it as an opportunity to push for more defense spending take a listen the circumstantial evidence against russia is very strong who would

harm. the. defense the first use of the room and spending two percent on defense it's not enough there will come a time for tradition and there will be consequences and there will be further information that follows but now i'm concerned about the incident and the consequences around and actually speaking in an interview this morning the defense secretary gavin williamson pulled that thread as well he refused to say whether or not he thought moscow was behind the attack on sergei script but almost in the same breath he also referred to russia as an ever greater threat despite the home secretary's appeal for everybody to keep a cool head about this news stories about sergei script pollen the therese just keep on coming one media report has even linked him to the intelligence

that came up with that so-called dodgy dossier on donald trump so some pretty wild theories swirling around in the meantime the police are getting on with the police investigation somewhere where they might actually on a few facts it's now been divided into three separate sites that investigation the script files her. the pub where they were drinking on sunday with their daughter and pizza restaurant where sergey script allen his daughter are thought to have eaten and the police say that they're combing through all the c.c.t.v. footage that they have and they're building a detailed timeline of events they've got hundreds of officers working around the clock trying to find out who it was that use that gas on surrogate script powell and his daughter and why was polly mentioned there the incident is dominating the news in britain and all the little is currently known about exactly what happened reporters are wasting no time in speculating it was orchestrated by the kremlin

a claim moscow strongly denies former u.k. police officer peter cook and believes the media hype does not help the investigation speculation in the media speculation by politicians is never helpful to an investigator when you get any sort of hard profile case you'll find that the media are going. going quite quite loudly about what their theories are and all the rest of it we've had it with hate crimes and crimes and various other things terrorism sort of a big thing that exhorts of the barrel it's not helpful to us to go to offices investigating officers know that they shouldn't be themselves be swayed by that they follow the evidence it's obviously not helpful. now the u.s. secretary of state is on an official tour of africa at the moment with ethiopia his first stop ahead of the trip rex tillerson claim the continent is being exploited by china and the issue that is expected to dominate the upcoming talks russia's

foreign minister though who's also on a tour of africa had this to say about to listens remark. i didn't know that rex tillerson isn't experts in africa china relations but i think it's a little tactless when on a visit to talk about the relationships of your hosts with other countries especially in such a negative way you go down after takes a look now whether africa will become a new stage for rivalry between the u.s. and china the united states wants africa back in its pocket which is all things considered a bit of a tall order just a few months ago african nations learned that according to trump they well to paraphrase the president kind of stink now the state department is on a bridge building mission we're partnering with our by incentivizing good governance to meet long term security and development goals. this is

a stark contrast to trying as approach which encourages dependency using open contracts predatory loan practices and corrupt deals china you see is something of a major headache for washington beijing has been courting african nations for years the asian powerhouse is involved in crucial infrastructure projects there it's invested billions of dollars in a rail road linking the continent from east to west effectively opening the door for pan african trade kenya is one country in particular that has benefited from china's cash injections it got its own railway the largest infrastructure development since its independence more than half a century ago but even this pales in comparison to a chinese construction firms in bishan in south africa to build an eighty four billion dollar city.

with. hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid education investments and a chinese t.v. channel for the african audience beijing is going all in here it's soft power strategy has already made china second most popular destination for african students and its military is in africa to last year china opened its first overseas base with a facility in djibouti the same year it held joint drills with tanzania chinese soldiers have already been here for a few years it's peacekeepers have been involved in missions across central africa so is it really that much of a surprise that some african nations prefer the chinese way over america's sweet talk the chinese has been front and center in providing us with roots this country . developed. to mock you possibly in this regard so we're working

very hard to go over and we believe that walk in to give would bring about beneficial relationship so i know it's become successful in africa because china tends to favor and tends to stress civilian projects some years ago the first president bush so that the united states had more will than wallet which means it's not offer is not able to offer the kinds of aid that china is so generously providing there's a real fear in washington that china isn't the plot passingly and that sooner rather than later the chinese economy if it is not already will be larger than the united states economy which will monumental impact on the balance of forces globally right now china has run the united states in africa on every front and it will take more than just words for washington to elbow its way past beijing it has

done of r.t. . we have some news just in from syria is eastern gate a we're told that terrorists there have shelled a large group containing both civilians and journalists who were near the exit from the besieged and russia's reconciliation center says that nearly three hundred families have been affected by this there are no there's no information though so far on casualties well that is just hours after a humanitarian convoy was temporarily prevented from entering the besieged syrian area on thursday due to military developments on the ground that is according to a spokesperson for the red cross the situation in eastern remained die.