This Starship has a lightsail of 1000km diameter. One of the two points of light at upper right is the Sun; the greenish light near the Sun is a laser. This laser is powered by a battery of many terawatts of lasers near Mercury. At the fringe of the Solar System, a focusing fresnel lens redirects the lasers into a single powerful, coherent laser beam which is able to shine a few light years distance. The starship is accelerating to about 20% of the speed of light due to the pressure of the laser light, and is able to carry a cargo of many tons to other star systems. The actual cargo is too small to see in this image; you can just see it at the very centre of the starship. To slow down and stop, the outer ring sail will detach and the inner sail/cargo will rotate 180 degrees, so the outer ring will reflect the laser to the inner sail. This painting is dedicated to Robert L. Forward who was a marvellous visionary scientist and writer.