CAT 2021 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

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Question 18 : 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.

Explanatory Answer

All given sentences other than sentence 4 relate to private commercial activity in space and the limitations of outdated space laws. Sentence 4 starts with ˜critics™ which does not link to any of the given sentences.
Sentences 5, 2 and 3 relate to commercial activity by private firms as opposed to nation states in space and the ill-suitability of existing state-centric laws. Sentence 1, on the legal status of space mining, adds to 2. In the order 5213, the sentences given form a cogent paragraph; 4 is the odd one out.

The answer is '4'