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.
Space research does involve a consiederable dillemma between manned and unmanned missions. The argument presented in the letter to the editor seems to touch upon this issue. At first sight, it might seem apt to the readers of the aeronautics magazine that the conculsions brought in are correct and should be implemented as stated. However, after detailed scrutiny as mentioned in the following paragraphs, some glaring errors are noticed which needs to be addressed before going to the boardroom.
Firstly, the author mentions about manned flight being costly and dangerous but does not mention the benefits achieved through manned missions. Space agencies have been sending men and women into space for reasons that might not be apparent to the general populace. A human in space can be far more worthy than a robot or a software which can malfunction at anytime. The argument fails to integrate this factor.
Simultaneously, it also does not provide any information regarding the relative costs between manned and unmanned missions. The author has conspicuously assumed that the maintainance and sustainability costs of satellites and space probes are much lesser than the price incurred for sending humans into space. The author does not provide citation to the measure by which he/she qualifies the word "dangerous". It is quite likely that an unmanned rocket might also turn in to a missile during launch posing equal damage causing capability to human life.
Secondly, it is poor potrayal of data from the author where he/she mentions the "recent successes". The sheer lack of numbers and statistical evidence makes this argument weaker. To which launches is the author addressing stays a matter of discrepancy. It is highly plausible that these missions were successful because huge money was spent in determining and consolidating safety parametes. Along with this, it should be mentioned that the author does not mention the number of missions that were successful. If this article is written on the basis of 1 or 2 samples, it cannot stand on its feet. The article fails to or rather hides the failure ratio of unmanned space missions and the billions of dollars lost in the process through this statement.
Lastly, the author also seems to assume that all possible scientific missions can be undertaken by space probes itself. If, for instance, it requires only a human intervention to undertake an experiment, it would be enormously expensive to build a robot that imitates the event in space. Also, the author seems to trust electrical and computer-based equipments far more than experienced human heads. The author relies on his/her instincts to put in huge loads of money in the unmanned space program instead of detailed technical and statistical analysis.
In denouement, I would like to state that it is necessary that human safety should be a topmost priority while deciding on space missions. However, the facts mentioned in the aforementioned paragraphs make me skeptical regarding investing unwarranted resources to unmanned space flight which do possess its own set of challenges. This decision without proper statistical thought could lead to devouring of precious tax payers money.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 516 350
No. of Characters: 2642 1500
No. of Different Words: 278 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.766 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.12 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.737 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 202 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.846 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.621 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.462 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.274 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.495 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.053 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, lastly, regarding, second, secondly, so, while, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2730.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 513.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.3216374269 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94061284225 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 276.0 204.123752495 135% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.538011695906 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 843.3 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 35.439526791 57.8364921388 61% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.0 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7307692308 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.84615384615 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.218562908345 0.218282227539 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0567345591923 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0476463351591 0.0701772020484 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.117418399299 0.128457276422 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0395736287025 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.86 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.