Larry Niven used a solar sail in several stories, e.g. "The Fourth Profession" and "The Mote in God's Eye". You can leave a "laser canon" on the launch world.

Larry Niven used a solar sail in several stories, e.g. "The Fourth Profession" and "The Mote in God's Eye". You can leave a "laser canon" on the launch world. That way, you can leave your rocket engine at home, where there are resources to fuel, maintain and improve it You can tack against the solar wind. You can - and this is the really cool one - use magnetic flux, if present in that region, to turn (even through 90%), by giving the space craft an electric charge. I've forgotten the details of how you change the net charge of a spacecraft, but I guess you could easily jettison electrons (or protons).