The author of the article "The Challenge of Exploring Venus" suggests that Venus is a worthy pursuit despite the dangers it presents. In paragraph 1 the author states, "While venus is simple to see from the distant but safe vantage point of Earth, it has proved a very challenging place to examine more closely." This sentence shows the author's beleif that Venus is a quite challenging planet to explore when up close. So far the author has given his opening formed one of his main ideas.

In paragraph 2 the author gives background information on how Venus is the closest planet to Earth in terms of size, yet every previous spaceship sent to Venus did not survive the landing. The author is doing a very good job at the beginning of the article to establish his main idea and giving relevant background information to support his idea. In paragraph 3 the author continues to label the reasons in which Venus is a dangerous planet to land on by giving the information that its' Is composed of nearly 97% carbon dioxide and its' ground temperatures average 800 degrees fahrenheit. So far the author is doing a very thorough job of describing the dangers of Venus, yet has not made an agrument that explains why it is a worthy persuit despite its' dangers.

In paragraph 5 the author starts to uncover some of NASA's ideas on how further exploration of Venus would be possible. One of those ideas include a hot air ballon style of exploration craft that will allow scientists to hover around 30 miles off of the planet's surface. The author goes on to say that this solution will certainly not make the conditions of Venus easy to handle, yet they will make them survivable. In the same paragraph the author also explains the importance of exploration on Venus. He goes on to say that Venus is on eof the closest planets in our solar system to Earth. This means that Venus may have at one point sustained life just like the planet Earth. This, in turn, gives an appealing reason in which exploration of Venus should definetly be considered.

In paragraphs 6 and 7 the author somewhat refutes his prior information from paragraph 5. The author does this by saying that although the blimp will keep scientists in survivable condition it will not aid them in collection surface samples or allow them to take pictures of the ground due to the overlaying carbon dioxide blocking the view of the planet. The author then goes on to explain that scientists have found a new solution to this problem. They decided that modren robots are too "weak" to explore the planet of Venus due to the amount of technology inside of them. If one wire comes undone then the whole robot is unusable. In order to combat this, the author states that scientists are planning on using mechanical computers due to their low use of actual technology. The author very effectivly refutes the opposing claim (the idea of the blimp) and then gives an example that shows how that original idea can be improved.

Overall, the author correctly supports his ideas and claims with background information and properly demonstrates how Venus is a worthy pursuit of exploration despite the dangers it presents.