Like any hobby, amateur radio has no upper bounds on what you can spend getting geared up. Shacks worth tens of thousands of dollars are easy to come by, and we’ll venture a guess that there …
So what do you need to talk to a $100 billion space station? As it turns out, about $60 worth of stuff will do.
I’ve had some success using a basic tape measure yagi and a Baofeng. https://www.jpole-antenna.com/2017/02/07/build-it-2-meter-tape-measure-yagi-beam-antenna/