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. Some consider space and becoming interplanetary not just worth doing but completely imperative.
Sadly it would be such a long way no politician is incentivized to get behind it. Also people can be jerks so while you're busy with this someone could just start a war with you.
>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.
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.
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.
>"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.
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.
Sure. But if those two groups can never see eye to eye it makes sense: one group feels good for moving towards an end goal, the other group gets positive side effects from relevant progress. Everyone wins.
To me there is no question about it, putting all eggs in one basket is always bad and diversification is good and the only reason not to explore space is short sighted thinking ("I personally don't get to reap the results in my lifetime so it is a waste to me"). Environmental issues on the planet also suffer from this.
It’s an argument about prioritization in a resource constrained environment. They’re saying there are bigger fish to fry. You can even be “pro-space exploration for its own sake” and still think it’s not a wise investment at a particular time. They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive groups.
You're still stuck in the mindset that space is a means to an end. If your plan is to exploit space for resources, it’s proving my point. You’re implying space exploration is just a means for resources and not an end unto itself. The fact that you use "may" is implying you're stretching to look for a silver lining to justify the answer.
And at least with current tech, the ARM programs show its too resource intensive to make sense in that regard. In other words, if there are other short-to-medium term problems that are competing for that funding (ie reality), there isn’t really a good case to be made that it’s a good way to spend constrained resources
Nothing is generally an end in itself. You get somewhere and then you see more figurative places to go. But staying home is the best way to never know they exist.
This is a very SV, production-oriented mindset. Everything is a means to an end, to check a box, to move to the next. However, not everyone thinks that way. I'd argue it's not a particularly healthy point of view. If you extend it to its inevitable conclusion, every step in your life is only meaningful because it leads to the next...and ultimately everything culminates in one's death, meaning nothing except your death was of any meaning. I'd encourage you to read Oliver Burkeman's "Four Thousand Weeks" to get a different perspective on how some things are an end to themselves.
I think there's a case to be made that exploration is an end of itself (this is the case made in the movie Interstellar) but that seems to be different that the point the OP made and that you're arguing with resources etc.
Sadly it would be such a long way no politician is incentivized to get behind it. Also people can be jerks so while you're busy with this someone could just start a war with you.