Steven Baxter is a good one, he’s an ex-NASA guy so he’s got the science cred, and wrote with Arthur C. Clarke a few times early in his career. His Manifold trilogy absolutely captured the modern era of rich-startup-dudes-trying-to-reboot-space-flight about fifteen years ago.
I also can’t recommend Iain M. Banks highly enough; start with Player of Games.
[edit] a little more on Banks… his Culture novels take the best aspects of Star Wars (the drama, but none of the magic space wizards) and Star Trek (the pretention of trying to write about politics, but actually succeeding instead of muddling around), and all written by a guy who somehow maintained a parallel career in Serious Literary Fiction (done via a hack of writing his genre fiction with the middle initial, and without it for the “serious” stuff, thus leading booksellers to thinking he was two different guys).
I also can’t recommend Iain M. Banks highly enough; start with Player of Games.
[edit] a little more on Banks… his Culture novels take the best aspects of Star Wars (the drama, but none of the magic space wizards) and Star Trek (the pretention of trying to write about politics, but actually succeeding instead of muddling around), and all written by a guy who somehow maintained a parallel career in Serious Literary Fiction (done via a hack of writing his genre fiction with the middle initial, and without it for the “serious” stuff, thus leading booksellers to thinking he was two different guys).
Simply the best space opera ever written.