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Actually, Robert Zubrin talked about this in his description of the MAGSAIL. See "Islands in the Sky" Pub 1996. If I'm not mistaken, he's been working on this since 1988 for sure. I don't recall if the idea originated from him or from Dana Andrews.

I've also used the magsail back in 2002 when I described the positioning and placement of a solar power satellite in an NSO, 10 million km from the sun in a feasibility study I created. The only difference is I used a brute force approach for creating a magnetic field, eliminating superconductors since power isn't a problem. Besides, the magnetic field needed to deflect charged particles in earth orbit only amounts to 52 nano-teslas and 11,600 nano-teslas 10 million km from the sun. By way of comparison, a regular refrigerator magnet's field is 4,000 times greater that wha would be required. Insisting on superconductors given the abundance of solar energy seems silly to me.

Sticking on my engineer hat, I did a lot of HTSC work in grad school.

Ceramic superconductors that operate at higher temperatures would deflect differently than an active magnetic field. A layer cooled to superconducting would sustain vortexes of flux, and also exclude flux from without. This would provide the shielding much like a normal Faraday shield. No current would be used or dissipated in a shield, and with proper radiator design, very little coolant would be required. .

In terms for nontechnical types, the tin enclosure of some electronics is a Faraday shield. It grounds the electrical potential cutting down EM waves. Magnetic flux not in a EM wave could penetrate, and a superconductor would act like this, except for magnetic fields. It would also require no power. In satellite design, a watt or two to make a active shield is a lot of power.