"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 claims that manned space flights being costly and risky, the resources should be invested in unmanned sattelites and probes because they are able to gather useful information. However, this argument is flawed because gathering a great deal of useful information from space as done by unmanned flight does not necessarily tantamount to the efficiency and ability of the manned flight.
First, we need to address the what kind of information is being talked about? Although, unmanned satellites are able to capture some useful information, but is this the information that is all required? One might need to collate information which can only be perceived by human eyes. We do not know from the argument how well the unmanned satellites are equipped to perform all those operations which a human mind can perform and the information collected is all that is necessary. Also, consider a case where there is an anomaly in the stratosphere which can have a severe impact on Earth, and the satellite is not "programmed" to collect such information. This will cost us heavily in the future if the men and women are not sent along with the satellite.
Second, how much time does it take for the unmanned satellite to gather this "useful" information and then interpreting this information. If a human accompanies a satellite, the satellite is also given direction as to where the information should be collected and prioritisation occurs. However, if a satellite is left to it's own, there could be a lot of disorganization which could actually take greater time in procuring the useful information from a lot of superfluous other information.
Third, is the task of gathering useful information the only task to be performed by satellites? The manned satellites might be performing tasks beyond just mere culling of information in the space. Until, the argument details out various tasks performed by satellites, we cannot conclude that unmanned space flights are ready to replace the manned ones.
Hence, for these reasons stated above, the argument is full of loopholes and major information is missing which hinders in arriving at the conclusion states by the author that resources should be invested in unmanned space flight.
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: 15 15
No. of Words: 364 350
No. of Characters: 1831 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.368 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.03 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.829 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.267 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.698 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.733 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.623 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.167 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, hence, however, if, second, so, then, third, well, as to, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1901.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 364.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.22252747253 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.36792674256 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.09616603447 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.486263736264 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 607.5 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.0855941754 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.733333333 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2666666667 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.2 5.70786347227 109% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.336991458753 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.122245919223 0.0743258471296 164% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0672803669093 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.194752664618 0.128457276422 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.088459975867 0.0628817314937 141% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.17 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.