Quiz on NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter

Which of the following sentences, if placed before sentence 1, would both capture the audience’s interest and provide the most effective introduction to the topic of the paragraph?

• NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter was launched on December 11, 1998, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

• On September 23, 1999, NASA officials were aghast when the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter vanished as it prepared to enter the red planet’s orbit.

• As part of a new set of missions intended to survey the planet Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter was launched by NASA scientists to study Mars’s climate and weather.

• When NASA officials lost contact with their Mars Climate Orbiter on September 23, 1999, they immediately instigated a search for the spacecraft using NASA’s Deep Space Network of radio antennae.

In sentence 2 (reproduced below), the writer wants an effective transition from the introductory paragraph to the main idea of the passage. The culprit was a discrepancy in the software that controlled the spacecraft’s thrusters: one team of engineers had calculated the force needed from the thrusters in pounds, an imperial unit, while another team calculated the force in newtons, a metric unit. Which of the following versions of the underlined text best achieves this purpose?

• (A) (as it is now)

• (B) thrusters; the data from the spacecraft and the data from NASA’s computers on the ground had not been matching up for months since the launch of the Orbiter

• (D) thrusters—software that was used to calculate the trajectory the Orbiter needed to take in order to enter Mars’s orbit successfully

• (E) thrusters: four thrusters were used for trajectory correction maneuvers as well as pitch and yaw control, while another four were used for roll control

In sentence 3 (reproduced below), which of the following versions of the underlined text best establishes the writer’s thesis in the passage?

The Orbiter mission failure is just one reason, albeit an extremely expensive one, that the United States needs to abandon future Mars survey missions.

• (A) (as it is now)

• (B) should consider privatizing space exploration

• (C) needs to adopt the metric system

• (D) should partner with other countries on future missions to outer space

In sentence 9 (reproduced below), the writer wants to provide a convincing explanation for why switching to the metric system would benefit United States industries. Switching to the metric system would also benefit United States industries: the European Union, for example, has been requiring its member states to standardize their metric systems since 1971. Which version of the underlined text best accomplishes this goal?

• (as it is now)

• industries: since most of the world already uses the metric system, it is likely to be the only measuring system in the future

• industries; in fact, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, encouraged United States industries to adopt the metric system

• industries: those with products in both domestic and international markets would no longer need to design in and produce to two different measurement systems, reducing both product overlap and manufacturing inefficiencies

The writer wants to add the following sentence to the third paragraph (sentences 6–9) to provide additional explanation. This means that the United States must convert to metric units whenever it is dealing with the rest of the world. Where would the sentence best be placed?

• After sentence 6

• After sentence 7

• After sentence 8

• After sentence 9

The writer wants to add more information to the third paragraph (sentences 6–9) to support the main argument of the paragraph. All of the following pieces of evidence help achieve this purpose EXCEPT which one?

• A mechanical failure on an amusement park ride that occurred because the imperial size of a particular part was ordered instead of the metric size

• A quote from Thomas Jefferson’s eighteenth-century proposal for a new decimal system to standardize weights and measures

• Data from a United States company demonstrating an increase in profits because of its conversion to the metric system

• A map showing the countries that use the metric system shaded in one color and those that use the imperial system shaded in another color

In the fourth paragraph (sentences 10–11), the writer wants to expand on the concession that converting to the metric system may seem difficult. Which of the following claims would best achieve this purpose?

• Many attempts to make the United States adopt the metric system have already been made.

• The units in the imperial system were first officially defined by the Office of the Exchequer in Great Britain in 1824, but they have existed as the Winchester Standards since 1588.

• Some people in Great Britain, which adopted the metric system decades ago, want to return to the imperial system.

• It would be extremely costly as well as confusing for the United States to manage the overwhelming task of converting everything from road signs to measuring cups to the metric system.

In the fourth paragraph (sentences 10–11), the writer wants to provide further evidence to rebut the claim that converting to the metric system might be difficult. Which of the following pieces of evidence would best achieve this purpose?

• A 2012 petition, signed by over 25,000 people, urging the White House to adopt the metric system in the United States

• An interview from an opponent of adopting the metric system in the United States

• A description of the successful adoption of the metric system by Great Britain, which had previously used the imperial system

• A United States government report estimating the cost of converting highway signs on state roads at $334 million dollars