The following opinion was provided in a letter to the editor of a national aeronautics magazine:
“Manned space flight is costly and dangerous. Moreover, the recent success of a series of unmanned space probes and satellites has demonstrated that a great deal of useful information can be gathered without the costs and risks associated with sending men and women into space. Therefore, we should invest our resources in unmanned space flight."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author of the letter insists that we should invest our resources in unmanned space flights instead of manned space flights. He bases his conclusion on the recent success of unmanned space probes. Moreover, he says that manned space flights are costly and dangerous. His argument is based on some assumptions that need further analysis. I will be providing a couple of assumptions that the author has made in order to reach his conclusion.
Firstly, the author states that manned space flights are costly and dangerous. However, the author has not given any numbers that suggest so. He assumes that manned missions are costly while unmanned missions cost less money. Perhaps, he does not consider the amount of money required for the development of robots and machines that are used in unmanned space missions. The development of these tools and machines is a costly process. These cost several millions of dollars to make and it is not considering that fact that they work as intended. If, during testing, these machines fail, then they have to be developed from scratch which would require even more money. Moreover, a clone of each machine is made for testing purposes. This means that an unmanned mission costs the same as, if not more than, an manned mission. The author also assumes that manned missions are dangerous. While true, he should not neglect that unmanned missions are also precarious. Any technical failure in the robots could stop the whole mission. This has happened many times that a mission was aborted in it's first day because the machines involved ceased to work as soon as they reached their destination. So, unmanned missions are as dangerous as manned missions.
Furthermore, the author assumes that unmanned missions give us the same amount and quality of information that we get from manned missions. He cites the success of the recent unmanned space probes and satellites. While recent unmanned space probes and satellites have indeed given us a lot of information, it would be erroneous to assume that these data and information are of the same quality as would have been fetched by humans on board. For example, when humans stepped foot on the moon, they brought a noticeable amount of samples that is simply not possible to be brought by robots. Moreover, humans are trained to overcome any difficulty that they face in space. We can rely on their discretion. The same cannot be said about machines. We have to give them commands from Earth that takes significant amount of time to reach the machines which has been deleterious to various projects over the years.
In conclusion, the author's argument, as it stands now, is significantly weakened because of the various assumptions made by him. If the above mentioned assumptions prove to be unwarranted, then the conclusion reached by the author could have grave impact on the future space missions endeavored by mankind.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/following-opinion-was-provided-l…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 484 350
No. of Characters: 2373 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.69 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.903 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.472 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.69 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.853 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.586 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.421 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.166 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 806, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...on costs the same as, if not more than, an manned mission. The author also assumes...
^^
Line 7, column 20, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s over the years. In conclusion, the authors argument, as it stands now, is signific...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, moreover, so, then, while, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 23.0 13.6137724551 169% => OK
Pronoun: 56.0 28.8173652695 194% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2433.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 484.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.02685950413 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69041575982 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57169829 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.454545454545 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 750.6 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 16.0 4.96107784431 323% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 22.8473053892 70% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.3713178162 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 83.8965517241 119.503703932 70% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.6896551724 23.324526521 72% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.48275862069 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.266609282115 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0863936288113 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.105002846758 0.0701772020484 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.168430050287 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102248798867 0.0628817314937 163% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.6 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.24 48.3550499002 114% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.6 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.76 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 5.5 12.3882235529 44% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 8.4 11.1389221557 75% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.