While I haven’t done so myself, I looked into home-made telescopes as a way of getting much larger apertures on a budget.
There is a whole group of hobbyists making primary mirrors up 80cm diameter for an order of magnitude lower cost than any off-the-shelf telescope with the same dimensions.
Of course this takes hundreds of hours of work (fun!) and weeks of waiting while the glass is sent off to be mirror coated.
While I haven’t done so myself, I looked into home-made telescopes as a way of getting much larger apertures on a budget.
There is a whole group of hobbyists making primary mirrors up 80cm diameter for an order of magnitude lower cost than any off-the-shelf telescope with the same dimensions.
Of course this takes hundreds of hours of work (fun!) and weeks of waiting while the glass is sent off to be mirror coated.