Space

CAT 2021 Slot 1 · VARC · Medium · Verbal Ability

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Five jumbled up sentences, related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out and key in the number of the sentence as your answer:

  1. The legal status of resources mined in space remains ambiguous; and while the market for asteroid minerals is currently nonexistent, this is likely to change as technical hurdles diminish.
  2. Outer space is a commons, and all of it is open for exploration, however, space law developed in the 1950s and 60s is state-centric and arguably ill-suited to a commercial future.
  3. Laws adopted by the US and Luxembourg are first steps, but they only protect firms from competing claims by their compatriots; a Chinese company will not be bound by US law.
  4. Critics say the US is conferring rights that it has no authority to confer; Russia in particular has condemned this, citing the US' disrespect for international law.
  5. At issue now is commercial activity, as private firms "rather than nation states" look to space for profit.
Answer

4

Explanation

Sentences 5, 2, 1, and 3 build a sequence about the shift from state-centric exploration to private commercial activity in space and the shortcomings of current space laws. Sentence 4 focuses specifically on Russian condemnation of the US, which introduces an off-topic external political critique. Hence, 4 is the odd sentence.

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