I'm John

John Batcher with David Livingston, Dr. Space.

This is Hotel Mars, episode N.

We're speaking with a professor emeritus of astrophysics and physics.

Jack Burns, he's vice president as well at emeritus for academic affairs and

research at the Center for Astrophysics and space astronomy. These are the

space geeks at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Professor, an unlimited budget.

No worrying about Falcon Nine.

You can have any Starship you want. In addition to that, you can place your Rolesus or its airs

anywhere you want on the moon, or I understand there's some ambition about Mars.

What is it you can achieve with the unlimited budget professor?

Well, John, a project we've actually been working on

and have received some design study money over two phases from NASA is called Farview.

And it's an array, a radio array of 1000, sorry, 100,000 antennas that we want to place on the far side of the moon.

What's interesting there is that will be the most sensitive radio

telescope ever built anywhere, Earth or on the moon. And secondly, the other thing

that in addition to the great science will be able to do is how we're constructing it. Instead of having to carry all of that material to the moon, we're actually going to mine some aluminum from the soil or the

regolith as it's called on the moon and process it using an electrolysis mechanism to extract aluminum and then plate that

aluminum back on the surface. In other words, we'll do advanced manufacturing of our antennas, our solar panels, and our cables on the

moon and construct it using materials on the booth.

So that's very exciting.

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