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by lsparrish 1568 days ago
It's just a bunch of automated drones flying in formation. Trying to calculate their orbits ahead of time in any kind of detail would be a fool's errand, instead we'd just use solar light pressure to steer them as needed (they would be very thin, there's no point to making them thick).

With really thin sails (0.78 g/m^2) they don't even need to orbit, as they can use light pressure to compensate for gravity (what Robert Forward termed a 'statite'). The light they reflect hits other sails on the other side, but this isn't a problem if they are distributed uniformly.