In the movie Apollo 13, based on the mission to the moon that took a turn for the worse, the astronauts were up in space with plenty of oxygen, but due to the damage to their vessel, they were left without sufficient filters to get rid of the carbon dioxide they were slowly exhaling into the air. On the ground, NASA engineers are tasked with solving the problem: create an air filter out of the limited supply of spare materials available to the crew in space.

There's a great scene in the movie where someone dumps a bunch of boxes of random junk onto a table and says to everyone in the room (to paraphrase): "We have to solve this problem using nothing but that." To emphasize his point, he gestures to the pile of stuff on the table before them.

The idea of doing this appeals to me. Most of us are constrained by certain things, usually by time or money, and while this hampers a lot of people, I'm always inspired by stories of people who started with very little, evaluating what they did have, and then putting it to good use.

Clearly, given a million dollars, there's a lot of things that most of us could do. There's a lot of things that most of us want to do. Much more interesting to try and solve a problem given the means you have access to.