Hey I'm back again with a dumb observation about one of these questions that I think is frustrating.

In this case we're talking about the fuel requirements for a space ship going to Mars (or its moon, Phobos).

The question premise states that the mission is manned, which, if you assume that all manned flights mandate return trips, leads you to the correct answer, E. This is not explicitly stated - it's a required assumption to arrive at this answer choice.

Now lets talk about answer choice D - the SHORTEST distance between Mars and is less than half the distance between Earth and Mars. There is one thing I can logically infer from this choice:

Now it's possible that the moon has a stationary orbit and is always further away from Earth than Mars, however, if I assume that orbits Mars, then it necessarily will reach a point where it is closer to Earth than Mars is. Or perhaps it does have a stationary orbit, and it is always closer to the Earth than Mars. Doesn't matter. All other considerations being equal, this would mean that reaching Phobos at it's closest point could possibly be closer than Mars at it's closest point.

This inference assumes nothing outside of what is stated in the question - it's an inference based on the fact that there is a non-zero difference between the distance of Earth-Mars and the distance from Earth-Phobos.

The correct answer requires an assumption - that the manned expedition requires a return trip. If we don't make this assumption, this answer resolves the discrepancy in no way.

I realize that answer choice D does not provide objectively solid resolution to the discrepancy in the passage. In fact, the language seems to indicate that it does NOT resolve the discrepancy because it explicitly states that the distance between Phobos and Mars is less than half the distance between Earth and Mars, but the trip to Mars requires twice as much fuel than the trip to Phobos.

My argument is this: We don't know what other considerations affect fuel consumption. We don't know if the manned mission is coming back to Earth. What I do know, is that I can logically infer that a greater distance traveled will lead to greater fuel consumption. The only way this is possible is if answer choice D is true - that there is a non-zero distance between Phobos and Mars.

It seems unlikely that this question would appear on a modern LSAT - it's possible that one-way manned missions to Mars were simply outside of the realm of possibility when this question was written. Today that is not true. In fact, it is very possible that the first manned mission to Mars is one-way, but who knows - it's irrelevant in the context of the LSAT which is what makes this question so infuriating. At the end of the day, I'm not concerned with whether or not I get this question right, but rather whether my reasoning is sound. Overall, my argument is that this is just a bad question, with unsound answer choices - I wouldn't actually argue that they should change the correct answer to D as that would seem to be an unfair question due to the sheer weakness of the inference in resolving the discrepancy in the stimulus.

I guess my question is would this question exist on an LSAT written today, and could this objection get it thrown out? I don't think E can be considered a correct answer unless they were to both eliminate choice D and replace it with an answer choice that in no way speaks to the distance between Phobos and Mars. Maybe I've been doing to much LR practice and I'm just losing my mind.

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"

EDIT: This is regarding PT4 S1 Q12 (LR question). I didn't realize that the "discuss" button makes a forum post.

I picked E because it was the only answer that made sense.

However, I don't see how it can be properly inferred from the passage. It's heavily implied, but it's not always true.

Basically, you can consider a situation where Leachate does not leak from a landfill because the landfill was not permeated by water, and thus leachate was never formed. Independently, the same landfill could exceed it's capacity to hold liquids. Maybe it's a landfill on Venus which is overflowing with molten iron, but there was no water present in the landfill to make Leachate in the first place. I realize that this is not something you can practically infer, but it does provide a logical exception to choice E and the LSAT is about finding the answer choice that has no logical exceptions.

Basically:

I wouldn't really be worried about missing this question - eventually I would settle on E as the only choice that could possibly make sense. But this question could be a huge time sink re-reading all of the other answer choices because you're positive you missed something and I'm not really sure how to avoid it.

I think my issue is that the question doesn't establish that leachate exists in all landfills, and that choice E makes a statement about all landfills, not just landfills that contain Leachate.

Am I crazy?

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"