Magnetoshells

ToughSF directs us to 2011 Plasma Magnetoshell for Aerobraking and Aerocapture (there's a 2013 powerpoint at this pdf).

It's all about propellant, as usual. One well-known opportunity for no-propellant is deceleration in atmosphere, as with parachutes over Earth. But aerobraking heats up the cargo. John Slough, David Kirtley, and Anthony Pancotti disliked that. Tiles are for full-on landing on Earth (or on Venus I guess). If the heating is longterm and in low-atmo, magnets should do the job. ToughSF summarises: a 1m loop of wires can act as a 17m wide parachute.

This is touted for Magellan, which required a lot of fiddling to get its transfer - to Venus - into something acceptably circular. Decent aerobraking would have helped.

Further digging has turned up cubesats over Earth. Dr Slough had earlier developed it for propulsion, like a solar-sail; I wanted that for a Venus statite. I haven't seen much in the past five years though.

Seems like a job for small packages. Maybe not for, oh, skating a large orbiter across Uranus' atmo.