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Comment by JKCalhoun

8 days ago

That's true — there are certainly a lot of variety now, especially with 3D printing and garage kits. The "long tail" has definitely been kind to the esoteric modeler.

Adult-me recently took to designing a kit for a NASA "Space Tug" that never existed (only proposed "artist's renderings" from the 1970;s) [1]. It is so esoteric that no one made a kit for it — I had to learn to use Blender, ha ha.

I just wish more kids were into modeling.

[1] free to download: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Space-Tug_3DModel

6 comments

JKCalhoun

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sho_hn  7 days ago

FWIW, this kind of thing is a lot easier to model in a CAD package (e.g. FreeCAD or Fusion) than Blender. If you ever go again!

  • JKCalhoun  7 days ago

    I have played with a couple of CAD packages (free ones like FreeCAD anyway). There is quite a learning curve to those as well.

    I had hoped that learning Blender would pay dividends in other types of pursuits as well since it is a fairly broad tool. And as you probably now, there are "mathematical" ways to use Blender — parametrization though is a bit lacking (without going down the plug-in rabbit-hole).

Joel_Mckay  8 days ago

It is funny, as the metal 3D printer I've been working on is designed to handle printing/repairing large girder structures. Making things work in vacuum is an interesting design challenge, but also opens a lot of design possibilities for arbitrary structures that can't launch on cargo rockets.

People are often too judgmental these days, and youth must make their own decisions about the world they want to live in.

If you know the history of how JPL started, than you can probably guess it is the "odd" ones that tend to change science for the better. =3