Star Points for November, 2005; by Curtis Roelle Declared and Denied Moon Races We start this month with an announcement. The Westminster Astronomical Society will be hosting their annual Telescope Buyers Workshop (TBW) on Wednesday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Bear Branch Nature Center auditorium. This annual event is designed to assist holiday shoppers who are interested in purchasing a telescope for that special someone. Members will have personal equipment on display and will provide information about telescopes and answer questions regarding the process of selecting a telescope. Last month China launched their second manned space mission sending Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng into Earth orbit on October 12 (11th in the USA) for five days aboard Shenzhou 6. China's previous first and only manned flight was made two years ago in 2003. For China as well as the average technologically advanced nation this was quite an achievement indeed. After all, China is only the 3rd nation in the history of the world to launch its own citizens into space. The Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space aboard Vostok 1 in 1961 -- 42 years prior to China's Yang Liwei in Shenzhou 5. The next year the Soviets placed two men in space -- 43 years before last month's 2-man Shenzhou 6. So does this mean that China is catching up or is it still falling behind but at a slower rate? Technically the Soviet's first duo in space were in separate spacecraft! The first true multi-man mission was launched in 1964 by the Soviet Union -- 41 years before Shenzhou 6. So perhaps the gap is slowly beginning to close. However, the Soviets managed to cram three men into their spacecraft compared to the two on Shenzhou 6. Another first (for China) was televising this year's launch live. Shenzhou 5 was launched secretly. China is gaining confidence as well as pride. During the cold war the Soviet space program was cloaked in secrecy. Launches were announced after the fact and long range plans were not publicized. When the US-Soviet moon race ended with the Apollo lunar flights the Soviet Union down played the feat by claiming that it wasn't in the race to begin with. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union along with declassification of American intelligence data in the 1990's the Soviet side of the race for the moon has been well documented. But at that point in time the Soviet denial of a moon race dove tailed with a number of diverse domestic agendas leading to the curtailment of U.S. manned space exploration beyond Earth. In his book "Red Star in Orbit" space historian James E. Oberg summarized it this way: "The eagerness with which this no-moon-race claim was accepted in the West is remarkable...The left gained support for the oft- expressed complaints about the wastefulness of Apollo expenditures. The right found confirmation of beliefs that the Soviets were too backward to ever dream of competing head-on with American know-how. The scientific community found ammunition for its general condemnation of wasteful astronaut jaunts rather than allegedly more productive unmanned exploration." However the race was real, and the Chinese are expressing their eagerness to land some of its plentiful supply of citizens on the moon. NASA announced plans in September to achieve a manned lunar landing by the year 2018. I attended a presentation in which a NASA assistant administrator outlined the plan. The milestone on the timeline in 2018 was not labeled "moon landing." Instead it read "7th moon landing." So China's stepping up to the starting line this century to compete for 7th place. But as he told me following his talk, "China may be planning for the next 1,000 years."