Travel times of stars within about 300 lt-yr

We recently showed that gravitational assists can be combined with the stellar photon pressure to decelerate an incoming lightsail from Earth and fling it around a star or bring it to rest. Here, we demonstrate that photogravitational assists are more effective when the star is used as a bumper (i.e., the sail passes "in front of" the star) rather than as a catapult (i.e., the sail passes "behind" or "around" the star).

This increases the maximum deceleration at {alpha} Cen A and B and reduces the travel time of a nominal graphene-class sail (mass-to-surface ratio 8.6*10^-4^g/m^2^) from 95 to 75 years. The maximum possible velocity reduction upon arrival depends on the required deflection angle from {alpha} Cen A to B and therefore on the binary's orbital phase. Here, we calculate the variation of the minimum travel times from Earth into a bound orbit around Proxima for the next 300 years and then extend our calculations to roughly 22000 stars within about 300lt-yr.