[bumby]

>I think the point is there would probably be many positive side effects and discoveries on the way somewhere that we should be going anyway

“Doing it for side effects” misses the whole point. Like I already said, if you can state the desired side effects, it’s better just to focus on developing them directly. If you can’t specify the desired side effects, it’s not a good goal. It’s just wishful, optimistic thinking and a bad strategy in a resource constrained environment.

Would you take a medication, not for its prescribed goal, but rather for its “potential” (yet undefined) side effects? Wouldn’t you rather just take a different medication that targets the desired outcome directly?

If you’re alluding to the idea of becoming an interplanetary species, I think the counter argument is that any risk that would mitigate would be more easily mitigated by other means. E.g., it would be much, much easier to “fix” the earth climate than terraform Mars. Redirecting an asteroid is potentially a good case, but the nature of the space program is mostly focused on human rated programs which aren’t needed for that.

[throwaway290]

Its not for side effects it's for direct effects. Side effects are bonuses. If you disagree that direct effects are useful and think we should never leave the planet then that's a different discussion.

[bumby]

That's exactly the discussion, though. The OP was saying the photovoltaic industry wouldn't be at where's it is today without the space program and it could be even further along if we dedicated more resources to space. Their value of the space program was explicitly defined by it's side effects. They made no claim that the space program was implicitly good for it's own sake. They never claimed we "should be going to outer space anyway," they claimed if we had dedicated more effort to fiddling around in space we'd be closer to replacing coal plants with PV.

[throwaway290]

> Their value of the space program was explicitly defined by it's side effects

where did it imply so? that's your conjecture

[bumby]

>"If we'd put more efforts into settling space, the demand for photovoltaics would have been higher. That might have pushed us down the learning curve faster and PV might have started turning coal power plants into stranded assets in the aughts or even the 90's instead of the teens."

They mentioned nothing of value inherent to exploring space but they certainly imply the real value is in "turning coal power plants into stranded assets." Space exploration is only a means to that end, not an end unto itself.

Can you point to anything in that statement that implies space exploration is (in your words) the intended direct effect? I think you're layering your own bias/values into their statement rather than taking their statement at face value.

[throwaway290]

To some people like me and possibly that commenter it is just imperative and is not worth stating separately, but I see your point

[bumby]

I get where you’re coming from, but I think that’s wrong given the context. The OP was in response to someone saying they wish we didn’t spend so money on the space program. So we’re starting from a place where whether or not it is imperative is being questioned, and in response they pointed to its tangential effects.