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."
The author here claims that we should invest our resources in unmanned space flight and not on manned space flight. The reasons they provide is that manned space flight is costly and dangerous. The author also claims that we have extracted a lot of information about space by sending unmanned space probes and satellites in a cheaper and risk free manner.
The biggest flaw of this argument is that the author is unaware of the amount of information that can be further extracted by sending humans into space. The author has failed to compare the differences in the amount of information extracted by just senors in satellites versus the benefits one gets when these are manually configured by humans and are observed.
The addition of a human element is definitely an expensive one as humans are very fragile in space. This is a very dangerous situation for a human too. But the amount of data collected and inferences drawn from a human observing and drawing conclusions than just machines performing the tasks is very high.
The additional risks of unmanned space is that it is a series of steps or instructions. The tasks that are to be performed are decided on Earth, and then programmed into the satellite. The satellite performs the same and sends back the results. This is assuming that the satellite reaches the destination, is able to communicate with the ground controllers, and absolutely nothing goes wrong or deviates from the initial plan. In case there is an aberration from the expected working, the uncertainity of the mission going wrong increases rapidly. The entire mission might be a failure. This is where human intervention would be extremely effective. If very minute things go wrong which without a human on the flight would render the mission a failure, the humans on board can fix this instantly and further continue the mission.
The technology we have presently cannot think or perform like a human does. The other factor the author is not considering is whether the increased cost and risk by sending humans into space is higher than a number of failed unmanned missions which could have been fixed by humans onboard, in the long run. Thus, one can refute the authors claim that we should invest our resources solely in unmanned space flight.
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: 6 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 385 350
No. of Characters: 1859 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.43 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.829 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.556 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 93 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.263 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.187 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.263 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.544 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.138 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 195, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...d space flight is costly and dangerous. The author also claims that we have extract...
^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...s in a cheaper and risk free manner. The biggest flaw of this argument is that t...
^^^
Line 3, column 154, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...extracted by sending humans into space. The author has failed to compare the differ...
^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...figured by humans and are observed. The addition of a human element is definite...
^^^
Line 7, column 186, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...and then programmed into the satellite. The satellite performs the same and sends b...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, so, then, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1903.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 385.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.94285714286 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.4296068528 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61555991167 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.490909090909 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 595.8 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.0987094126 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.157894737 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2631578947 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.52631578947 5.70786347227 27% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.180915922102 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0694948186832 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0921451790863 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114799038958 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.110988834244 0.0628817314937 177% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.37 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.