Rate the following essay on its writing, argument, and language skills:
The author of "The Challenge of Exploring Venus," stated that meeting the challenge of exploring Venus is valuable because it will provide more knowledge of the planet, but also because humans will be curious about many dangerous things in the future. The author stated many dangers and doubts of exploring the planet, but then described solutions that may or may not work. It is contradictive that he decided to include facts and data that went against his own thoughts because he came back and listed data that went against the negative statements. The author created confusion to what he actually believes.

The author of the article described Venus as Earth's "twin." That suggests that we already know some facts about Venus such as it's density and size, which is enough to make people curious to how much about Venus we already know. He said that we know that Venus has many similar structures to Earth, such as mountains, valleys, and craters. If Venus is Earth's "twin," doesn't mean that it is extremely similar to Earth? The statement could make people curious about how close Venus really is to Earth, or it could make them wonder why we should bother risking people's safety if we already know that Venus is just like Earth. The author needed to be clearer on which way he wanted people to view that statement.

The author also brought up the dangers of visiting Venus multiple times. Then, he would proceed to follow the statement with tested and untested solutions. It was hard to tell which way he sided. According to the author, "Venusian geolegy and weather present additional impediments like erupting volcanoes, powerful earthquakes, and frequent lighting strikes to probes..." He later stated that NASA has a possible idea to send blimp-like vehicles to travel the surface of Venus, but that would not provide a detailed enough view of the ground. In order to get his point across to the audience, he should not have kept going agianst information.

The author went off topic throughout the article. The different information created slight confusion as to what the message he was trying to convey. The author stated that NASA is working on an approach to studying Venus that involves mechanical computers. He then said, "The thought of computers existing in those days may sound shocking, but these devices make calculations by using gears and levers..." It is irrelevant to the message when the mechanical computers were envisioned or the fact that it is shocking to hear that computers existed in 1940. It was hard to understand why computers were important to the article at all. The author made it difficult to focus on the message when he was stating random facts that were not important to the idea he was trying to support.

The author did not make it extremly obvious as to what he was truly trying to convey. If he would been more clear and less contradictive, then it would have been more obvious that he supports the idea that Venus is worthy of being explored. Also, it would have been easier to understand the point he was trying to put across if he would have stayed on topic throughout the article. The message of the article should be obviously supported by the author.

Score: 6