Les Johnson is an author, scientist, and NASA technologist. His latest book, A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars (Princeton Press), describes how we might someday reach the stars. You may learn more about Les, his books, and his work by visiting his website: www.lesjohnsonauthor.com.
Ken Roy is a retired engineer who enjoys thinking about terraforming, space exploration, military history, transhumanism, and reading Baen books. He enjoys attending LibertyCon and talking to fans. Feel free to strike up a conversation. He also enjoys looking at the stars and dreaming of a positive future.
“For my part, I know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
—Vincent van Gogh
When you are outside on a dark night and the skies are clear, the sky bursts forth in a majestic display of countless stars and a few planets. When you look at those stars, your eyes are seeing the light from distant suns that has been traveling through space for years, decades, centuries, and perhaps millennia. Many of those stars are just like our own sun, classified by astronomers as a yellow “Class G” star, and not atypical among many others you might see. Some are larger or smaller, some are hotter, others cooler, and you might think that the stars you view are the norm for those that make up our Milky Way galaxy—and you would be wrong.
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