Real Solar Sails are Not Ideal, and Yes It Matters

Abstract

Ideal solar sails are perfectly flat, rigid, and reflective, can hold arbitrary sun angles perfectly, etc. Real sails are very different. Yet much preliminary mission analysis is done with ideal sails, on the assumption that the only important effect of non-ideal behavior is slightly reduced performance. This assumption is often false. Real sails simply cannot fly some mission plans that look plausible for ideal sails, and in other cases, realistic mission design and realistic sailcraft design much consider some aspects of non-ideal sail behavior from the start.