PT 59, S3, Q18 Those who claim that governments

[aileenann]

Principle questions are strictly tied to assumption questions, so the same concerns should inform our evaluation of the argument.

Briefly, the gist of the argument is that governments should continue to devote funds to space exploration (It's usually a good idea to delete double negatives in your argument diagrams, as I have done here) because many useful past technologies have been created by this seemingly irrelevant scientific endeavor.

With this in mind, let’s inspect our answer choices.

(A) is subtle but nonetheless out of scope in using the phrase "should not be prevented" (we care about what they should do _ there is no suggestion of prevention or its opposite in the argument). Moreover, the logic turns more on the unintended consequences’ benefit, which this proposed assumption doesn’t get at.
(B) this is a much greater degree than we want _ the author does not rely on blind adherence or an extremely high estimation of the benefits. Rather, he documents actual results and does not imply that they are limitless.
(C) this posits a relationship that is in no way necessary to the conclusion and may even go a bit against common sense!
(D) matches on perfectly to what the author is saying, as described above. Particularly important is that this assumption relies only on past benefits, as those are the only ones the author uses. This is our answer.
(E) is much broader than we need. Moreover, while "ambitious" would seem to suitably describe space programs, the author has not given an indication as to whether he thinks such programs are ambitious.
Is everything here clear?