Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur cover image

Advanced Spaceship Drive Compendium (Narration Only)

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

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The Different Types of Stars and Their Propellers

A Shikata thruster is a type of stellar engine designed for using a star's own power to move it by surrounding the star in orbital mirrors or statites which reflect light in one direction. With this method stars can be slowly accelerated up to a small fraction of light speed, bigger stars accelerate faster as they have a higher brightness to mass ratio. All versions are slow though and because of the acceleration time it is a relatively minor difference in effort to move them across the galaxy or even between galaxies compared to simply moving them a few systems over. See also Kaplan thruster, Helios drive, Nova drive, Quasar drive.

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