This means that magnetic sails could maneuver to most orbits.

A magnetic sail would also employ the solar wind.

However, this requires the magnetic sail to be maintained in its "unstable" orientation.

The solar and magnetic sails have a thrust that falls off as the square of the distance from the Sun.

A magnetic sail could also thrust directly against planetary and solar magnetospheres.

Magnetic sails bend the path of the charged protons that are in the solar wind.

A common misconception is that a magnetic sail cannot exceed the speed of the plasma pushing it.

For applications to spacecraft propulsion, see magnetic sail.

It is a simplified, very low-budget magnetic sail.

The range of maneuvers available to a magnetic sail inside a planetary magnetosphere are more limited than in a plasma wind.

Just as with solar sails, magnetic sails can "tack."

As the speed of a magnetic sail increases, its acceleration becomes more dependent on its ability to tack efficiently.

In typical magnetic sail designs, the magnetic field is generated by a loop of superconducting wire.

This gives a mass/thrust ratio of at least 700 kg/N, similar to a magnetic sail, neglecting other structural components.

Thus, in interstellar spaceflight outside the heliopause of a star, a magnetic sail could act as a parachute, to decelerate a spacecraft.

Another method of artificially influencing an orbit is through the use of solar sails or magnetic sails.

The thrust that a magnetic sail delivers within a magnetosphere decreases with the fourth power of its distance from the planet's internal magnetic dynamo.

Magnetic sails could also be used with beam-powered propulsion by using a high-power particle accelerator to fire a beam of charged particles at the spacecraft.

The magnetic sail deflects charged particles from the solar wind with a magnetic field, thereby imparting momentum to the spacecraft.

Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails, magnetic sails, plasma-bubble magnetic systems, and using gravitational slingshot effects.

When operating away from planetary magnetospheres, a magnetic sail would force the positively charged protons of the solar wind to curve as they passed through the magnetic field.

Therefore, a magnetic sail must deflect a proportionally larger area of the solar wind than a comparable solar sail to generate the same amount of thrust.

The operation of magnetic sails using plasma wind is analogous to the operation of solar sails using the radiation pressure of photons emitted by the Sun.

A magnetic sail oriented in the same direction as the magnetosphere is not stable, and will have to prevent itself from being flipped over to the opposite orientation by some other means.

Just as with the more familiar small-scale magnets used on Earth, a magnetic sail can only be attracted towards the magnetosphere's poles or repelled from them, depending on its orientation.