The legendary French artist and courageous intellectual who added dimension to the event by saying it was meaningless for only an empty shells to go to the Moon, and injected the vision of a spaceship into the book. Famous in Europe for his appetite for danger, Ardan figuratively hypnotizes the American continent upon his landing in Tampa-Town. He is the hero who bends the stiff seriousness of science with the humanity of art and humor, not only making Barbicane and Captain Nicholl reconcile but also taking wing with them into the world's most dangerous journey with insouciant elegance.
A personality who has had thousands of pages written about him in the French and European press, who has never worried about any impossible danger he has encountered, and who has managed his life with the elegance of a high-stakes gambler. To him, crossing boundaries is so natural that he considers space as merely the next street beyond Earth.
Tall, with red, lion-maned hair atop a sculptural body, and round, nearsighted eyes. With flowing shirts and jackets that hang off his wide, curved frame, an untied tie, and stiff, upswept cat-like mustaches, he possesses the majesty of a mixture between an artist and a warrior.
J. T. Maston
They adore each other as they are matched in excitement and enthusiasm; Ardan is the person who fuels Maston's fire the most.
Kaptan Nicholl
He turned his skeptical and scowling weapon of honor into a smile with his wit, gaining a comrade out of an armed enemy.
Impey Barbicane
He infused the calculations of this stubborn technical genius with his grace and spirit. They became perfect friends because he humanized him.