Stellar engines: Design considerations for maximizing acceleration

Illinois State University
Acta Astronautica
4-Sep-2019
Stellar engines, megastructures used to control the motion of a star system, may be constructible by technologically advanced civilizations and used to avoid dangerous astrophysical events or transport a star system into proximity with another for colonization. This work considers two designs for stellar engines, for both human applications in the solar system and for advanced civilizations around arbitrary stars more generally, and presents analytic calculations of the maximum acceleration and deflection of a star in its galactic orbit. The first is a large ‘passive’ solar sail, similar to that proposed by Shkadov, which we find produces accelerations of order

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576519312457