The classroom was the same as it had been last week: normal, with the only tweak being the holographic blackboard at the front of the class. It was showing a three-dimensional image of the Sol system right now; Kaidan had stepped to the side to make it more visible.


"Hey," he started. "I thought we'd start out our astronomy classes close to home. We're gonna be talking a lot about 21st century ideas about space exploration, the current classification system... that kind of thing."

"The Sol system is the solar system that has the star Sol as its centerpoint," he said, pointing it out on the hologram. "Eight planets orbit Sol: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune." He pointed at each planet as he named it. "Outside of that, we've got a couple of dwarf planets, most of which are in orbit somewhere past Neptune. At least, that's the classification system we're using in this time period. Ideas about various planets and their definition are constantly evolving. Take Pluto, which was considered an actual planet instead of a dwarf just a couple of years ago."

"Separating the inner planets--" he tapped Mercury, "and the outer planets--" he tapped Jupiter, "is the asteroid belt. For those of you who might not have heard of it - it's basically a large mass of rocky objects drifting in roughly the same orbit. There's another asteroid belt called the Kuiper belt right outside Neptune."

"We're going to be talking about asteroids, planets and stars in more depth later," he continued. "The fact of the matter is that science is always evolving. In my time, we know things about all of these objects that no one could have even dreamed of in this time. And we owe a lot of that to exploration. To the people who were willing to figure out how things worked, by going out there or by sending things out there. I think it's only fitting we devote our first class to them."

"I mean, think about it. Going out there all alone, not knowing what you'll find? Just because it's important for us to know more about our galaxy? Because we're not satisfied with having this big black spot all around us? Because we can't help but look up at the sky and think, 'we haven't been there yet, we should go'-- even though it's terrifying and alien-- that's remarkable, isn't it?"

He leaned back. "I want you to do a couple of things this class," he said. "First, I want you to tell me what space exploration programs you might have heard of, what they accomplished. It doesn't matter where or when you're from - just tell me. What did they learn? Was it important?"

Kaidan rolled his sleeves back up. "Second of all," he said, "I want you to pick a partner. Go out, do some research. What do people in your galaxy already know about? What don't they? What would be worth that effort for-- what's unexplored that shouldn't be? I'd like you to think about that and then work out a presentation between the two of you for next week."