In the article "The Challenge of Exploring Venus" the author argues the point that studying venus is a worthy pursuit, despite dangers that it can present. Throughout the article the author supports this idea with various forms of evidence. Ultimately, the author is ineffective at supporting their cclaim because they fail to provide sufficient factual evidence supporting it, jump to conclusions without providing sufficient logical reasoning, and provide significantly more evidence for the counter to their arguemnt than the arguement itself.

The author attempts to provide some factual basis for their claim that visiting Venus has worth, despite risks. They primarily included these in paragraph 4. The main ideas they used were that "it (Venus) may well have once been the most Earth-like planet in our solar system" (4). This fact fails to support their argument, however, since the author does not provide any justification as to how it might make exploring Venus a more desireable option, especially considering the risks. It would make far more sense to simply explore a differnet planet that ws more hospitable and could actually be studied. The phrase "once have been" is also very telling. Certainly Venus is no longer at all Earth like save for its geology, as the planet has vastly different conditions to Earth in almost every other aspect. The author also states that Venus can "sometimes be our nearest option for a planetary visit" (4). This fact also fails to support their conclusion that there is worth in exploring Venus, because the planet is only sometimes the closest option. At other times Mars is closer to Earth than Venus. If this is the case, then it would make far more sense to explore Mars as it is far less hostile to life than Venus is. The author again fails to provide sufficient logical evidence to validate the conclusion that Venus is worth the risk, especially because there is a safer alternative that is sometimes even closer than Venus.

In addition to failing to provide sufficient factual evidence in support of their argument, the author also jumps to conclusions before actually connecting any logical reasoning to them in order to justify said conclusions. The author concludes at the end of the fourth paragraph that "the value of returning to Venus seems indisputable." (4) . However, they failed to provide any effective reasoning as to why this is the case. It would seem that the author began with this conclusion, but failed to actually justify it. It is certainly disputable that there is value in returning to Venus, so coming to such a strong conclusion on such flimsy evidence is simply ridiculous. It is simply another example of how the author faied to effetively support their claim.

Finally, the author provides significantly more evidence for the counter to their argument, than they do for the argument itself. Throughout the article the author gives details about how incredibly inhospitable Venus is to human life. For example, they state "On the planet's surface temperatures average over 800 degrees Farenheit" (3), and "the atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than what we experience on our own planet" (3). By providing this evidence the author is attempting to acknowledge the detractors to their argument and then provide a rebuttal to it. However, the author provides a much greater wealth of evidence for the idea that Venus is wholly inhospitable than they do for the idea that this difficulty is worth it. They provide only two brief facts on why exploration might be necessary, but have an example of how dangerous Venus is in nearly every paragraph. Ultimately this causes the claim that Venus exploration is worth the risk to lose validity because it creates a perception amongst the readers that the risks associated with the exploration of Venus far outweigh the benefits. It also contributes to an overall lack of focus in the article as the author constantly interjects facts about Venus' dangers.

Ultimately this author does a poor job at supporting the claim that exporing Vesus is a worthy pursuit despit the risks due to their lack of factual evidence, tendency to jump to conclusions, and the overwhelming surplus of evidence for the counter to the argument. These iniptitudes create a failure of an argument which is unable to stand up to even mild scrutiny.