[dylan604]

once you've negated the delta-v, reel in the sails or detach them or whatever. at that point, Sol's gravity should do the rest. i'm sure some smart people with slide rules could determine when to do it to not be influenced by Venus/Mercury on the way in.

[Denvercoder9]

> once you've negated the delta-v

My point is that you can't cancel out the velocity of your orbit around the sun using solar sails.

[jandrese]

So if you had the sail at a 45 degree angle to the sun, bouncing the photons forward to your orbit, wouldn't that eventually slow you down? Or do you get pushed outward into a slower orbit at the same time and cancel it out?

It's all a moot point anyway since solar sails are so ridiculously impractical that this would basically never work in real life regardless.