[4][5] As a child, Ledbetter watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing and dreamed of being an astronaut but was unable to pursue that career due to poor eyesight.

[5] Instead, Ledbetter began a thirty-year career as a mechanical designer[2] in the aerospace industry, including work on the radiator system for the International Space Station.

[7] Ledbetter's novelette "The Long Fall Up," originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, won the 2016 Nebula Award.

[8] The science fiction story focuses on a future where children are not allowed to be born in zero gravity due to the risk of disfiguring mutations.

He edited the anthology The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade, released by Simon & Schuster,[9] and is a consulting editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.