GMAT Essays (AWA)

ARGUMENT ESSAY
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“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.”

Discuss how well-reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
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The authors conclusion states that we, the human kind i assume, should invest our resources in unmanned space flight. This conclusion is weakly supported by the premise present in the argument stated by the author. I believe that this argument is flawed and is not well-reasoned, and put forth certain points that put the argument under a lens.

Quoting from the argument "recent success" itself attacks the author's claim. How is it that we know that lots of money has not been poured down the drain since ages, and after a whole lot of research and development, only now we have been able to receive some form of success. The author could have strengthened his reasoning by providing sufficient data which shows that the developments in this field has started fairly recently and there were not many failures before the so acclaimed "recent success".

The author also vaguely describes the information gathered by these unmanned probes and satellites to be useful. We do not know whether this information has already been gathered and by manned probes earlier is redundant or not. The information may be useful, but could have already been obtained earlier. The argument can be more believable if it contained the real usefulness of the data collected and that it was not obtained previously by manned probes and satellites.

Moreover, the author claims that costs and risks associated with sending men and women into space have been reduced. Don't the unmanned probes and satellites have to be constantly monitored and a similar job of what people use to be doing on board be handled from the ground. This will require a lot of funds to be invested, infrastructure and support systems to be built and people to be trained specifically for the job on hand. This again weakens the author's stand on reduced costs and could have been strengthened by provided evidence that no base station costs were also incurred to operate the unmanned flights.

Further more, the argument states that manned space flights are risky. This fact is not supported by any statistical data. How can the risk be measured if there were hardly any incidents or mishaps reported in the past. The argument can be more reasoned by providing concrete evidence of casualties when it comes to manned space probes.

In conclusion, i would like to state that the authors argument is feeble in its stand and does not include appropriate support for one to believe his 2 cents. The argument can be strengthened by providing facts such as insignificant failures in the development and testing phase of unmanned space flight, less cost involvement at the base station for such programs, higher risk with statistical information for manned space flights and the degree of usefulness of non-redundant information gathered by unmanned space flight programs.
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Very similar comments as your other essay. You are spot on with your discussion of the faulty logic; I'd just like to see a couple more sentences in each body paragraph to strengthen your analysis.

I'll give you a 4.5 - would bump up to a 5 for sure if it were a bit longer.