Why So Few?

Why do so few people 'make' planetariums? The easy answers are legion. You can buy them!. Toy planetariums, semi serious slide planetariums with films of thousands of stars. You can buy old commercial planetariums. You can adapt a video projector with software. Why would you want to build one in 2012? And the above is for people who wonder about the stars, who want to see them and learn them to begin with. With myriads of other options, you can buy constellation cufflinks on Etsy and everything in between. Nobody can really SEE the real stars anymore, so they are becoming non-entities in the real sky. Oddly they've merged with those other 'stars', movie stars, Star Wars Star Trek Star Search . star is one of the most overworked 4 letter words we have! But even when I started building planetariums in the 60s, very few people built them. Most of the above wasn't in play. Spitz sold the Junior but how many bought those? Richard Emmons was building them in Ohio, to be followed by Steve Smith. I was lucky to purchase works by both of these pioneers and meet them. But very few others. Building planetariums is hard. Its kindof like, I think I'll make my own bowling ball. I think I'll make my own soldering iron. When I came up people DID make things from scratch, or kits - you could build a crystal radio, grind a telescope mirror, buy heathkit tvs etc. Not so much anymore. The desire alone is practically nonexistent then, to be followed by ridiculous difficulty. Arcane requirements that are not obvious. Endless experimentation in the dark. Why WOULD anyone want to go through all that? There are many many reasons why very few people 'make' planetariums. Its got me wondering, why am I one of the few? It was early inspiration, being impressed by the Adler in the mid 60s, much as I'm sure kids in 77 were affected by Star Wars. It was a concurrent discovering of amateur astronomy, but on an incredibly modest level - a 2.4 department store scope under suburban Chicago skies. Expectation management was never difficult for me due to my roots! It was a happy environment growing up where we made everything. Skateboards, race cars, army guns, baseball fields, models, indian headresses ... we made so many things. But it still might now have happened if my mother hadnt liked cakes. Weekly brought home square white cake boxes from an old defunct discount chain called Topps. I had a flashlight bulb on a board with wires leading to a battery pack. I don't know WHY I had this. I had no earth globes. No celestial globes. I remember going to a friends house with my light and cakebox, and stars punctured in it with a safety pin. And was blown away. Maybe it was because I could see more on the ceiling than I could in those suburban skies. Maybe it was because I could only be taken to Adler twice a year, but now I had my own. Maybe it was just standard operating procedure for a kid of the 60s to make everything. But it planted seeds in my mind. Seeds that would blossom much later in life. Why dont people make planetariums? The answer must be in some of the above? They don't now, and they didnt then either. They never have. And probably never will. But I'm not like that for some reason. I'm glad.