"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.
While it would be unanimously agreed upon that safety comes first, it is critical to ensure that the trajectory of human creativity is not to be hindered by unnecessary fear. Therefore, for us to reach a solid conclusion about the comparison, there must be more to the evaluation of unmanned space probes than merely bringing back information, however valuable. This seems to be absent in the author's argument.
Before venturing to ascribe inevitable incremental costs and risks to manned space flight, a careful look to its evolution over the last century is a must. After all, it was once thought a dream that a man could ever land on space. Also, the author solely described unmanned probes as evading the human cost but failed to address the monetary cost of developing such standalone machinery. Additionally, and probably more important, such trend would incur the opportunity cost of trying to modify the less intelligent machines so that they become competent enough to collect human-like observations, a task that the most brilliant of minds would engage in. On the other hand, sticking to this comparison implicitly assumes that the two cannot work in unison. That is, it fails to connect the advances in unmanned probes with how humans can later adopt them in more complicated flights, where humans would be less exposed to risks.
In conclusion, even though it is tempting to prioritize the safety of man by more reliance on technology, the evolution of manned space flights suggests that it is a false dichotomy to think of the two as contradictory. Moreover, where the outcome of unmanned space probes was mentioned by the author, there were no adequate discussion of their costs or the probability to utilize them in manned flights. Unless such assumptions are cogently proven, there would not be enough support for the recommendation.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 12 15
No. of Words: 305 350
No. of Characters: 1515 1500
No. of Different Words: 177 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.179 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.967 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.744 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 109 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 77 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.417 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.206 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.498 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.079 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 394, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...aluable. This seems to be absent in the authors argument. Before venturing to ascrib...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, look, moreover, so, therefore, while, after all, in conclusion, such as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1552.0 2260.96107784 69% => OK
No of words: 305.0 441.139720559 69% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.08852459016 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.17902490978 4.56307096286 92% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83873464852 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 183.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.6 0.468620217663 128% => OK
syllable_count: 498.6 705.55239521 71% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.4186535432 57.8364921388 103% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.333333333 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.4166666667 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 10.0833333333 5.70786347227 177% => OK
Paragraphs: 3.0 5.15768463074 58% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.181467287627 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.067692997395 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0624936578371 0.0701772020484 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127757752359 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0536685011482 0.0628817314937 85% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.54 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.48 8.32208582834 114% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Minimum four paragraphs wanted.
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.