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I love seeing amateurs do things that are normally thought of as
big industrial or defense projects. In the last few years, it's become
much easier for dedicated amateurs to build amazing things. One reason
is that it's much easier to find, evaluate and buy parts over the web.
Formerly, you could only get components by talking to a lot of
salespeople who wouldn't want to talk to amateurs. Everything in my
scooter was found, evaluated and bought over the web, usually late at
night. For items such as motors, I probably compared products from 10
different manufacturers. Back in the 20th century, talking to 10
manufacturer's reps, getting catalogs, getting quotes, and arranging
to buy one might have taken 30 hours of work over 3 weeks, all during
work hours. Now it takes me 3 hours in one sitting.
Amazingly, though, many industrial component manufacturers still don't put product specs on the web. And the majority don't post prices. How am I supposed to know what I want if I don't know how much it costs? Cost is always a consideration. That's true both on the plus side and the minus side. Sometimes I get lower-quality things because the highest-quality things are too expensive. Sometimes I get higher-quality things than are strictly necessary because they aren't much more expensive. Prizes for amateur projects are good. If you're a philanthropist, you could hardly spend your money better than by funding prizes for amateur development of advanced technologies. A good example is the X Prize, which will probably succeed in bringing amateur spaceflight into existence for less than 1/1000 of what it cost NASA. Government can fund amateur development too. Overbot is an example of a team of amateurs that might make breakthroughs in an important technology because they were catalyzed by a miniscule (by government standards) amount of federal money. |