Essay
“The “Space Race” of the 1960’s between the USA and Russia was very expensive but it yielded a tremendous number of technological advances. These advances have provided many economic and humanitarian benefits. The benefits have more than paid for the effort and money spent during the Space Race and therefore the government should make allowances within the budget to pay for a manned Mars landing by 2020.”
Response
The argument asserts that the government should make allowances within the budget to pay for a manned Mars landing by 2020. The reasoning is based on previous technological and humanitarian benefits achieved during the 1960`s space program. The argument also states that the benefits achieved because of the space programs during the "Space Race" out weighed the developmental costs. The issues The argument is based on certain assumptions which our not backed by concrete evidences. To draw an accurate conclusion more details need to be provided
Firstly the argument assumes that the developments during the Space Race out weighed the negetive impacts. It could be that for every benefit their were many disadvantages like pollution of environment, negative impact on health, the developments of weapons of mass destruction etc. If the developments had so many high benefits then why did the Space programs slow down after the Space Race got over? Why did Russia not equally benefit from their similar programs as did USA?
Secondly the argument assumes that the technological advancement which took place because of the space program could not have taken place any other way. Many highly sophisticated technological advancements have taken place without any link to space programs. Inspite many components that are used in satellites were not originally developed for it.
Finally the report assumes that what worked in 1960 will again work in 2020. The conditions in 1960 like the budget available, world economy, food security , infrastructure requirement, total population, global warming etc might be different in 2020. Over spending on the mars mission in 2020 may cause economic collapse, cause lead to social unrest etc. The report should provide a comparison between all these conditions.Since 1960 lot of technological advancements have taken place hence no significant development in technology might take while completing the mars project.
In conlusion, the argument based on which the conclusion is drawn is based on many inherent flaws. The report should provide detail statistics and analytical data.
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