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

Essay topics:

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.

Author surmises that since manned space flight is costly, we must invest our resources in unmanned space flight. The premise he or she uses is the recent success of unmanned space probes and satellites that could gather great deal of information. However, on deeper scrutiny, the argument proves to be standing on myriads of stated and unstated assumptions--the purpose of both manned and unmanned flights is the same and both are interchangeable, the manned flights are costly, unsafe, the resources can either be invested in manned flight or unmanned flight--which if unwarraneted can undermine the author's conclusion.

Firstly, the author claims that the sucees of unmanned flights to gather useful information suggests that we can substitute the launch of manned flight with unmanned flight. This stands on the unstated assumption that both the flights -manned and unmanned- are sent for the same purpose. Is it not possible taht manned flights are sent for gathering other kind of information than the unmanned? For example, manned flights can convey useful information like how it feels on other planets, how does the body react, what is the composition of the soil therein, etc. These informations cannot be gathered by the unmanned flights which are mostly satellites and can have their own set of limitation. Thus, assuming that the two are interchangable is fallacious, and author must produce detailed purpose of both inorder to warrant his assumption.

Secondly, the author states that the manned flights are costly and unsafe. This stated assumption is nowhere supported by any kind of data or substantial proof. What if the cost of both unmanned and manned flight turns out to be equivalent? We need a rigoroust cost report and analysis to justify the assumption that one is costier than the other. Also, what does the author mean when he says that unmanned flight is "dangerous"? Is he accounting only the risk associated with the few human lives that would be travelling in the manned flight? What if unmanned flights have more risk of exploding or falling back on earth. That would put more number of innocent lives on earth on risk. It is quite possible that the manned flight proves to be more safe in this case. Therefore, the author must justify these assumptions in order to bolster his opinion.

Lastly, the author assumes that the resources can be either invested in manned flight or unmanned flight. Although, it is quite possible that resources are sufficient enough to be invested in both. Or it is also possible that the nation's economy is running under crisis and cannot afford investment in any of the two flights and some other third thing is what the priority must be. So, without the knowledge of these alternate possibilities, we cannot justify that the resources must be invested in unmanned flight only.

In sum, the entire argument is weak, standing on he assumptions discussed earlier. If these assumptions prove to be unwarrented, the argument would fall. In order to strengthen the argument, the author must bring forth the justifications and evidences required to substantiate his opinion. Else, we must be skeptical of it's credibility.

Votes
Average: 7.5 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 413, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... both manned and unmanned flights is the same and both are interchangeable, the m...
^^
Line 1, column 603, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...which if unwarraneted can undermine the authors conclusion. Firstly, the author clai...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 107, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Although” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ed in manned flight or unmanned flight. Although, it is quite possible that resources ar...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 231, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'nations'' or 'nation's'?
Suggestion: nations'; nation's
...n both. Or it is also possible that the nations economy is running under crisis and can...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 47, Rule ID: HE_THE[1]
Message: Did you mean 'on the assumptions'?
Suggestion: on the assumptions
..., the entire argument is weak, standing on he assumptions discussed earlier. If these assumptions...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'then', 'therefore', 'third', 'thus', 'for example', 'kind of']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.203071672355 0.25644967241 79% => OK
Verbs: 0.170648464164 0.15541462614 110% => OK
Adjectives: 0.116040955631 0.0836205057962 139% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0409556313993 0.0520304965353 79% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0358361774744 0.0272364105082 132% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.11433447099 0.125424944231 91% => OK
Participles: 0.0443686006826 0.0416121511921 107% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.85596092994 2.79052419416 102% => OK
Infinitives: 0.018771331058 0.026700313972 70% => OK
Particles: 0.00341296928328 0.001811407834 188% => OK
Determiners: 0.102389078498 0.113004496875 91% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0341296928328 0.0255425247493 134% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0221843003413 0.0127820249294 174% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3197.0 2731.13054187 117% => OK
No of words: 521.0 446.07635468 117% => OK
Chars per words: 6.13627639155 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.77759609229 4.57801047555 104% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.401151631478 0.378187486979 106% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.280230326296 0.287650121315 97% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.201535508637 0.208842608468 97% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.115163147793 0.135150697306 85% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85596092994 2.79052419416 102% => OK
Unique words: 227.0 207.018472906 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.435700575816 0.469332199767 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 50.1673720214 52.1807786196 96% => OK
How many sentences: 27.0 20.039408867 135% => OK
Sentence length: 19.2962962963 23.2022227129 83% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.7142670401 57.7814097925 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.407407407 141.986410481 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2962962963 23.2022227129 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.555555555556 0.724660767414 77% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 3.58251231527 140% => OK
Readability: 47.3193289259 51.9672348444 91% => OK
Elegance: 1.46206896552 1.8405768891 79% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.512176061349 0.441005458295 116% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.145626469478 0.135418324435 108% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0893974383494 0.0829849096947 108% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.514815120965 0.58762219726 88% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.144847350422 0.147661913831 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.202407120758 0.193483328276 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0941340174771 0.0970749176394 97% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.528945221055 0.42659136922 124% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.107948956274 0.0774707102158 139% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.376922694447 0.312017818177 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0896279614215 0.0698173142475 128% => OK

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.33743842365 60% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.87684729064 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.82512315271 207% => Less neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 5.0 6.46551724138 77% => OK
Negative topic words: 9.0 5.36822660099 168% => OK
Neutral topic words: 8.0 2.82389162562 283% => OK
Total topic words: 22.0 14.657635468 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.