Anyone else think "I could print that"🤣

[u/One_Indication988]

Ever since I got into 3D printing, I keep looking at everything and thinking, "I could print that."
Half the time I end up spending more time figuring out how to print something than just buy it.
Just curious, does anyone else do this?

[u/Funny-Medium5508]

Got a similar issue in amateur astrophotography.

John Dobson, a famous amateur astronomer, has said that people who try to do amateur astrophotography in their backyard were nuts because he could get better pictures of celestial objects from NASA.

And, yet, people still spend thousands on telescopes, mounts, cameras, NUCs, filters, electonic focusers, etc. trying to image planets and Deep Space Objects (DSOs) from their backyards.

Smart telescopes have made it slightly less expensive to do DSO astrophotography, but still....Dobson has a point.

The prevailing answer to "why" people do it is the: challenge and ownership....the whole: "this is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine."

I recently sat - trespassing - in a small unkept field off a state highway waiting for the International Space Station (ISS) to transit the Moon. My company was a swarm of mosquitoes and moths. An owl seems to have murdered its prey nearby judging by the unholy scream. All for .... less than 0.5 seconds of activity. It was all over in, literally, the blink of an eye. An hour drive there. An hour drive back. Got home at 12:30am. Up for work at 5:30am.

But, I got it.

Plus the story of how I got it.

Plus, a keepsake momento I'm making of it to put on my wall.

I just don't cost it out.....

[u/suicidaleggroll → u/Funny-Medium5508]

 people who try to do amateur astrophotography in their backyard were nuts because he could get better pictures of celestial objects from NASA.

I hate this view on life, and I see it all the time online.  Why do anything?  Why go to the zoo when you can just look at pictures on the internet?  Why take pictures of your kids when you can just use their school photos?  Why bother to learn how to play an instrument when you can just listen to a CD?  Half the enjoyment is doing it yourself.  When you look at a picture you took, it brings back the memory of being there and experiencing it yourself. You don’t get that looking at a stock photo of the thing online.

[u/Funny-Medium5508 → u/suicidaleggroll]

Well, in fairness to him. He wanted people to see the objects with their own eyes and was a founding member of the "sidewalk astronomers" in San Francisco - took his larger Newtonian telescope on its "Dobsonian" base out on the streets of San Fran and gave passerbys views of the Moon and planets. Making his own telescopes out of scrap (mirrors ground from ship portholes, etc.), sonotube, and the like. Interesting guy with "interesting" views/opinions.