Roller-Reefing technology
Roller-Reefing is a technology which provides fuel less attitude control, pointing, steering and station keeping to solar sail spacecraft and to space based solar power satellites and stations.
It was invented by Frank Ellinghaus in a German patent application (DE102005028378A1) for very large space mounted structures with an Outer-Ring sceleton.
Another strength of Roller-Reefing devices is, that launching a large solar sail is made possible through splitting it into several sail foil panels furled onto sail foil rolls which
are just mounted to their roll holder brackets on the outer rim of the spacecraft structure.
To introduce this technology to smaller, Earth launched solar-sail spacecraft and solar power stations also, the same inventor filed patent applications in Germany, UK and the USA
( DE102005062841B4 , GB000002434345B , US 020080217482A1 ) regarding a Solar-Sail-Launch-System, consisting of a
System-Launcher and a System-Sail mothership spacecraft with already at launch docked daughter units.