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 this above letter clearly believes that we should no longer invest our resources in manned space flight, mainly because of its high costs and its dangers to astronauts. Therefore he argues that unmanned space flight is a smarter option both economically and in regard to human risk. However, he makes several assumptions about the benefits of unmanned space flight, while not giving enough evidence of his negative views of manned space flight. By being unable to prove that manned space flight is indeed exceedingly costly and dangerous, and by assuming that manned space flight will be more effective and less costly, he lacks support in his argument that we should indeed invest our resources in unmanned space flight.
Though his report on the recent success of unmanned space probes and satellites is compelling proof that unmanned space flight is indeed useful, he does not give enough supporting evidence about whether this information is comparable to the information obtained by manned space flights. He only says that the unmanned space flights have "gathered a great deal of useful information", but he does not say what sort of information the space probles and satellites have gathered. The information might have been related only to certain, mechanical aspects of space exploration, such as analysis of a planet's atmosphere or surface content. Some space flights might require more than just this sort of mechanical labor and may highly benefit from the creative thinking skills or observation skills of a human astronaut. For example, a space mission with the goal of obtaining information about unforeseen breakdowns of space equipment may benefit more from human hands and logical thinking ability than from the workings of a machine. Therefore, the author must prove that the ability of unmanned space flight is analogous to the ability of manned flights in various endeavours.
Even if the author could provide compelling evidence that unmanned space flight brings high quality results that are equal to manned flights, he does not prove his other point that unmanned space flight is preferable to manned space flight because of the high costs associated with sending people to space. In order to prove his statement that unmanned space flight should be adopted, he has to show that unmanned space flight is more affordable while being equally effective. However, he does not mention whether the program does indeed cost less. It could even cost more, for all the reader knows, due to more expensive maintenace fees and costs for more technologically advanced equipment.
Though the author is obviously more inclined toward unmanned space flight than the traditional manned flights, he does not prove evidence for his statement that manned space flight is dangerous. Though the nature of space travel is so extraordinary and incomprehensible to the layperson that it seems naturally dangerous, statistically, it might even be safer than car travel or plane travel. The author merely states that space travel is dangerous, but he does not show any figures or facts or prove that unmanned space travel will reduce injury and mortality rates related to space travel in general. If his statement is proved unwarranted, then he would be expecting the nation to invest in unmanned space flight when it is not necessary.
Though the author desires for a change from manned space flight to unmanned space travel, he has to prove that manned space flights in fact are more costly than unmanned space flight, and that they are in fact more dangerous. He also has to prove that unmanned space flights bring in the same caliber of information as manned space flights. If his statements about space travel prove unwarranted, then he would be encouraging the nation to invest in a program that is has high potential of being more expensive and less effective.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 633 350
No. of Characters: 3197 1500
No. of Different Words: 237 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.016 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.051 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.519 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 251 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 156 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.151 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.446 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.599 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.347 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 185, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...gh costs and its dangers to astronauts. Therefore he argues that unmanned space flight is...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 609, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'planets'' or 'planet's'?
Suggestion: planets'; planet's
...pace exploration, such as analysis of a planets atmosphere or surface content. Some spa...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 533, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...eing more expensive and less effective.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, while, as to, for example, in fact, in general, sort of, such as, in regard to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 58.0 28.8173652695 201% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3280.0 2260.96107784 145% => OK
No of words: 633.0 441.139720559 143% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.18167456556 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.01592376844 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65908267709 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.388625592417 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1017.9 705.55239521 144% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 56.5411575256 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 156.19047619 119.503703932 131% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.1428571429 23.324526521 129% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.09523809524 5.70786347227 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.355407684373 0.218282227539 163% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.149816600406 0.0743258471296 202% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0815125492027 0.0701772020484 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.254365724749 0.128457276422 198% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0237847455697 0.0628817314937 38% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.0 14.3799401198 125% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.03 48.3550499002 85% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.36 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 129.0 98.500998004 131% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.