The author does not support his idea well. In "The Challenge of Exploring Venus." the author never really gives us a good reason to explore and investigate Venus. The author mainly supports his idea with the fact that Venus may have been like Earth a long time ago, but it is not really necessary to learn about Venus.

In the article, "The Challenge of Exploring Venus." the author supports his idea that studying Venus is a worthy pursuit despite the dangers it presents by comparing it to Earth and how it has many Earth-like features, "Long ago, Venus was probably covered largely with oceans and could have supported various forms of life, just like Earth" paragraph 4. And even though this may have been true this is not nessacary. If we do somehow figure out a way to study Venus, what would we do with that information, it's just useless information.

The author gives us some information about Venus in paragraph 3, "temperatures average over 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and the atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than what we experience on our own planet." from this description we know that Venus has extreme conditions, and that it is inhospitable for humans, paragraph 4, "our sister planet is so inhospitable". If human cannot inhabit Venus what would be the purpose of spending a lot of money in order to obtain information for our curiosity.

In the article the author spends more time talking about how we would be able to explore Venus than why we should explore Venus. Out of 8 paragraphs the author gives us 2 paragraphs on why we should explore Venus, in paragrpah 2 he tells us that it is one of the closest planets to us. In paragraph 4 he tells us that astronomers are curious about Venus because it is so alike to Earth. Then in paragraphs 5, 6, and 7 he talks about NASA how they will go about exploring Venus, "Imagine a blimp-like vehicle hovering 30 or so miles above the rolling Venusian landscape." instead of just giving us more than 2 reasons on why we should spend our money and time to do something pointless.

The author did not support his ideas well. In the article he wrote more on how we would get to explore Venus rather than giving us more than two reasons on why we should explore Venus. In the article he gives us one big reason why we shouldn't try to explore, we can't inhabit Venus because of the extreme environment. And if we can't really do anything with that planet why bother trying to explore it.