About CasDrive
What would it take to build a spacecraft that any person can own, pilot, and park at home — and eventually fly across the galaxy?
That is our question. Not a thought experiment. A design problem.
What We Do
CasDrive researches, designs, and will ultimately manufacture personal spacecraft. Our product roadmap spans six generations:
- CD-1: Near-Earth orbital commuter — your first step off the planet
- CD-2: Lunar express — Earth to Moon in under 48 hours
- CD-3: Solar system cruiser — Mars trips measured in weeks, not months
- CD-4: Interstellar shuttle — reaching neighboring star systems
- CD-5: Galactic rover — free roaming across the Milky Way
- CD-Ω: Intergalactic ark — crossing to other galaxies and coming home
Each generation unlocks a new range of distance. The first three are grounded in known physics and engineering. The latter three require breakthroughs we intend to pursue.
How We Work
We publish everything. Every calculation, every design iteration, every dead end. Our research covers the full technology ladder — from proven ion drives to theoretical Casimir-effect propulsion.
We produce two layers of content: engineering-grade analysis for specialists, and product-style publications for everyone else. Think of it as a spacecraft company that operates like a research lab and communicates like a car manufacturer.
The Name
Cas carries three references: the Casimir effect (quantum vacuum energy — our long-term propulsion target), Cassiopeia (the navigator's constellation), and Cas9 (the gene-editing tool that rewrites biological rules — we intend to rewrite the rules of travel).
Drive means both the engine and the act of piloting.
In Chinese: 仙后驱动 — Cassiopeia Drive.
Founded
March 6, 2026.
Research
CasDrive's research agenda follows a technology ladder from proven to theoretical, with each tier feeding into a specific product generation.
Propulsion Systems
| Tier | Technology | Maturity | Target Product |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ion / Hall-effect thrusters | Flight-proven | CD-1 |
| 2 | Nuclear thermal propulsion | Ground testing | CD-2 |
| 3 | Nuclear fusion drives | Conceptual | CD-3 |
| 4 | Antimatter / laser sail | Theoretical | CD-4 |
| 5 | Zero-point energy / Casimir effect | Fundamental research | CD-5 |
| 6 | Spacetime metric engineering | Speculative physics | CD-Ω |
Human Factors — The Seven Questions
Every spacecraft we design must answer seven questions that matter to the person who will fly it:
- Safe ascent — How do you get to space without astronaut training?
- Safe return — How do you come home through atmospheric re-entry?
- Acquisition — How do you buy a personal spacecraft?
- Storage — Where do you park it? Do you need a landing pad at home?
- Energy & range — What powers it, how far can you go, and how do you refuel?
- Cabin experience — What is it like inside during a multi-day trip?
- Speed & human tolerance — How fast, how long to the Moon, and can your body handle it?
Each question will be addressed in a dedicated research publication.
Current Focus
Our immediate research priority is a full-spectrum technology pathway report — scanning every critical barrier between today's aerospace technology and a personal spacecraft you can park at home.
Publications
Research outputs are published on this site as they are completed. Engineering-grade analysis is paired with accessible summaries for general readers.
Founding Note: The Personal Spacecraft Problem
Published March 2026
The Gap
In 2025, a seat on a Blue Origin suborbital flight costs approximately $200,000–$450,000 for 11 minutes above the Kármán line. SpaceX's Crew Dragon missions run $55 million per seat for orbital access. The Polaris Dawn mission achieved the first commercial spacewalk — and each crew member's ticket was estimated at over $100 million in program costs.
These are extraordinary achievements. They are also proof that space travel remains an industrial-scale operation requiring teams of hundreds, months of training, and budgets measured in hundreds of millions.
The automobile was once equally exclusive. In 1900, fewer than 8,000 cars existed in the United States, each hand-built and costing the equivalent of $40,000–$100,000 in today's money. By 1920, Henry Ford had shipped 15 million Model Ts at $260 each. The technology didn't change — the approach did.
CasDrive asks the Ford question for spacecraft: What would it take to make a personal vehicle that flies to Mars and parks in your driveway?
Why This Matters Now
Three converging trends make this question less absurd than it sounds:
- Propulsion physics is opening up. The Casimir effect — a measurable quantum force between uncharged conducting plates, first demonstrated by Lamoreaux in 1997 — suggests that vacuum energy is real and extractable. In 2024, researchers at the University of Waterloo published results showing dynamic Casimir effect photon generation at rates 10x higher than previous experiments. We are not at "engine" stage. But we are past "impossible" stage.
- Materials science is catching up. Carbon nanotube fibers now achieve tensile strengths of 80+ GPa — stronger than any structural material in history. Radiation-shielding composites using boron nitride nanotubes have demonstrated 30% mass reduction over traditional aluminum shielding in NASA Langley tests (2023). A personal spacecraft demands materials that don't exist yet, but the trajectory is pointed in the right direction.
- AI-accelerated design is compressing timelines. What took aerospace engineers years of wind tunnel testing and iterative prototyping can now be simulated in days. DeepMind's GNoME discovered 2.2 million new crystal structures in 2023 — the kind of materials discovery that feeds directly into spacecraft engineering. CasDrive intends to leverage AI not as a buzzword, but as a genuine design accelerator.
What CasDrive Will Study
Our research agenda follows a technology ladder, from proven to theoretical:
- Tier 1 — Existing Propulsion: Ion drives, Hall-effect thrusters, solar sails. These work. How do we miniaturize and optimize them for a single-pilot vehicle?
- Tier 2 — Near-Future Propulsion: Nuclear thermal, fusion drives (USNC-Tech's designs, Helion's approach). What does a compact reactor for a family spacecraft look like?
- Tier 3 — Theoretical Propulsion: Casimir-effect energy extraction, Alcubierre-inspired metric engineering. The hardest problems, and the reason we exist.
- Cross-cutting — Human Factors: Cockpit design for non-professional pilots. Life support for a family of four. Re-entry procedures that don't require astronaut training.
Our Approach
CasDrive publishes everything. Every calculation, every design iteration, every dead end.
We are not a stealth startup. We are an open research institution that happens to be structured as a manufacturer — because the end goal is not a paper, it's a product.
If you had told someone in 1900 that in 70 years, humans would walk on the Moon, they would have laughed. If you had told them that in 120 years, a private company would land rocket boosters on drone ships in the ocean, they would have called you insane.
So: when will a personal spacecraft sit on a home landing pad? We don't know yet. But we intend to find out.
Technology Pathway: From Here to the Galaxy
CasDrive Research Report 001 — March 2026
How do you get from a rocket that costs $55 million per seat to a personal spacecraft parked in your driveway? You climb a ladder. Each rung is a generation of propulsion technology, and each generation unlocks a new range of distance.
This report maps every rung.
The Ladder
| Gen | Name | Propulsion | Range | Travel Time | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD-1 | Orbital Commuter | Chemical + Ion hybrid | Earth ↔ LEO (400 km) | ~8 min ascent | Engineering feasible |
| CD-2 | Lunar Express | Nuclear thermal + Ion cruise | Earth ↔ Moon (384,400 km) | 24–48 hours | Ground testing (DRACO) |
| CD-3 | Solar Cruiser | Nuclear fusion | Inner solar system | Mars in weeks | Conceptual |
| CD-4 | Interstellar Shuttle | Antimatter / Laser sail | ~50 light-years | Years to decades | Theoretical |
| CD-5 | Galactic Rover | Zero-point energy / Metric engineering | Milky Way (~100,000 ly) | Requires FTL or near-FTL | Fundamental research |
| CD-Ω | Intergalactic Ark | Wormhole traversal / Unknown physics | Other galaxies | Instantaneous (theoretical) | Speculative |
Rung 1 — Chemical + Ion Hybrid (CD-1)
What exists today: SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts 22,800 kg to LEO at ~$2,700/kg. Raptor 3 engines have doubled thrust while cutting cost by 75%. Ion thrusters (Hall-effect, gridded) deliver 3,000–5,000 seconds of specific impulse and are operating on NASA Psyche right now.
The gap for personal use: Current launch vehicles require ground crews of hundreds, months of preparation, and expendable or partially reusable hardware. A personal orbital vehicle needs:
- Vertical takeoff and landing from a residential-scale pad (~15m diameter)
- Autonomous flight control (no astronaut training required)
- Thermal protection for reentry — the sweating spacecraft concept (Texas A&M / Canopy Aerospace, 2025) promises reusable TPS with turnaround measured in hours, not months
- Compact life support for 1–2 people over 2–4 hour missions
Acceleration profile: To reach LEO, you need ~9.4 km/s of delta-v. At 3g sustained acceleration (the upper limit of comfort for untrained civilians), you reach orbital velocity in about 5 minutes. The human body can tolerate 3g for several minutes — fighter pilots routinely sustain 6–9g. The real constraint is not g-force but sustained comfort and accessibility for non-athletes.
Energy: A single-person capsule (~2,000 kg) reaching LEO requires roughly 8.8 × 10¹⁰ joules — equivalent to about 2.4 tons of liquid methane/LOX. This is heavy but feasible. The hybrid approach: chemical boost to clear the atmosphere, then ion cruise for orbital maneuvering.
Parking: The eVTOL industry (Deloitte, McKinsey) has already designed three tiers of ground infrastructure — vertihubs, vertiports, and vertistations. A residential vertistation needs ~225 m² (15m × 15m). That is roughly the footprint of a two-car garage with clearance. For CD-1, this works — but thermal and acoustic shielding for residential areas remains an open design problem.
Timeline estimate: 15–25 years. The propulsion exists. The miniaturization, autonomy, and cost reduction do not — yet.
Rung 2 — Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (CD-2)
What exists today: The DRACO program (DARPA + NASA, $499M) is building a flight-testable nuclear thermal rocket. NASA Marshall completed 100+ cold-flow tests on a full-scale development unit in 2025. General Atomics passed fuel testing milestones. NTP delivers ~900 seconds Isp — roughly double chemical propulsion.
The gap for personal use: Nuclear thermal engines are currently designed for large crew vehicles (Mars transit). A personal lunar vehicle needs:
- Compact reactor (~500 kg class vs. current multi-ton designs)
- Radiation shielding that does not consume the entire mass budget — the AstroRad vest (StemRad + Lockheed Martin) demonstrated selective organ shielding, reducing mass by targeting only radiation-sensitive tissues
- Autonomous launch/landing at both Earth and lunar surfaces
- Life support for 48–72 hour missions with 2–4 occupants
Speed: With NTP at 900s Isp and a mass ratio of 3, you get ~10 km/s delta-v beyond LEO. Moon transit at sustained 0.5g acceleration: ~4 hours to reach halfway, then decelerate. Total: 8–12 hours (vs. Apollo's 3 days at coast trajectory). At lower, more comfortable 0.1g: 24–48 hours.
Key risk: Nuclear propulsion in residential proximity. Even with modern shielded reactor designs, public acceptance of nuclear-powered vehicles launching from neighborhoods is a regulatory and social challenge that may be harder than the engineering.
Timeline estimate: 30–50 years. NTP flight testing expected late 2020s, but miniaturization to personal scale adds decades. FY2026 budget threats to NTP funding could delay further.
Rung 3 — Fusion Drives (CD-3)
What exists today: Multiple fusion approaches — Helion Energy (field-reversed configuration), TAE Technologies (beam-driven FRC), Commonwealth Fusion Systems (high-field magnets). None have achieved net energy gain in a form applicable to propulsion. ITER remains decades from power production.
The gap for personal use: Fusion propulsion promises 10,000–100,000 seconds Isp and megawatts of thrust power. A compact fusion drive for a family spacecraft (4–6 people, ~10,000 kg) would enable:
- Mars transit in 2–4 weeks (vs. 7–9 months chemical)
- Jupiter system exploration in months
- Sustained 0.1–0.3g acceleration for gravity simulation during transit
Energy density: Deuterium-tritium fusion releases 337 × 10¹² J/kg of fuel — roughly 10 million times the energy density of chemical propellant. A Mars round trip would require kilograms of fuel, not tons.
Timeline estimate: 50–80 years. Fusion power generation may arrive in 15–20 years; fusion propulsion adds another 20–30 years of engineering; miniaturization to personal vehicle scale adds more.
Rung 4 — Interstellar Propulsion (CD-4)
What exists today: Breakthrough Starshot is developing laser-propelled lightsails to reach Alpha Centauri (4.37 ly) at 20% lightspeed — but for gram-scale payloads only. Antimatter propulsion remains theoretical — CERN produces ~10 nanograms of antihydrogen per year.
The gap for personal use: Crossing interstellar distances with a crewed vehicle requires:
- Specific impulse > 100,000 seconds
- Multi-year life support with closed-loop recycling
- Radiation shielding against relativistic interstellar medium
- Deceleration capability at destination (the hardest part — you need fuel to stop)
Bussard ramjet concept: Collect interstellar hydrogen as fuel while traveling. Elegant in theory, but interstellar hydrogen density (~1 atom/cm³) creates more drag than thrust at achievable magnetic scoop sizes.
Timeline estimate: 100–200 years, assuming continued exponential growth in energy technology. Or sooner, if a breakthrough in antimatter production occurs.
Rung 5 — Zero-Point Energy / Metric Engineering (CD-5)
What exists today: Dr. Harold White (formerly NASA Eagleworks, now CEO of Casimir Inc.) has demonstrated Casimir-effect energy extraction from nanostructured silicon chips — achieving 3.5V capacitive discharges. DARPA is funding this research, though they call it "very fundamental, very risky, and even speculative." The Limitless Space Institute calculates 2.2 piconewtons per resonant tunneling diode, theoretically scalable.
The gap for galactic travel: From piconewtons to the meganewtons needed for a spacecraft is a factor of ~10¹⁸. This is not an engineering gap — it is a physics gap. We need either:
- A method to amplify Casimir forces by many orders of magnitude, or
- An entirely new approach to vacuum energy extraction that we have not yet conceived
Warp drive research: The Alcubierre metric describes spacetime geometry for apparent FTL travel. A March 2025 paper demonstrated a method to control spacetime curvature via electromagnetic fields, reducing energy requirements from 10⁶² J to 4.9 × 10⁶ J. A January 2026 paper in the European Physical Journal C showed how to match Alcubierre spacetime with flat Minkowski space. Neither paper builds a drive — but both advance the theoretical foundations.
Why this is CasDrive's core: The name is the mission. Casimir-effect propulsion is what separates a solar system vehicle from a galactic one. If it works, it changes everything. If it doesn't, we will have contributed real physics along the way.
Timeline estimate: 50–200+ years. Or never. Or tomorrow, if someone finds the right configuration. This is fundamental physics — timelines are meaningless.
Rung Ω — Wormhole Traversal (CD-Ω)
What exists today: General relativity permits traversable wormholes in principle (Morris-Thorne metric, 1988). Maintaining a traversable wormhole requires exotic matter with negative energy density — which the Casimir effect actually produces, making it the only known physical phenomenon that generates the right kind of energy.
The gap: Creating, stabilizing, navigating, and surviving a wormhole transit. Each of these is currently beyond our physics. But the theoretical connection between Casimir energy and wormhole stability is real — and it is why CasDrive exists at the intersection of these two concepts.
Timeline estimate: Undefined. This is the horizon beyond the horizon.
Summary: What Stands Between Here and There
| Barrier | Affects | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| Launch cost reduction | CD-1 | Rapidly improving (SpaceX $2,700/kg, trending lower) |
| Autonomous flight control | CD-1, CD-2 | eVTOL industry solving this for atmospheric flight |
| Reusable thermal protection | CD-1, CD-2 | Breakthrough concepts in 2025 (sweating TPS, SiC composites) |
| Compact nuclear reactors | CD-2 | DRACO program active, but miniaturization needed |
| Residential launch infrastructure | CD-1 | eVTOL vertistation concepts exist, not yet adapted for spacecraft |
| Compact fusion drives | CD-3 | Fusion energy still pre-commercial |
| Antimatter production scale-up | CD-4 | Nanograms/year — needs 10¹⁵× improvement |
| Casimir force amplification | CD-5 | Piconewtons demonstrated, meganewtons needed |
| Spacetime metric engineering | CD-5, CD-Ω | Theoretical only, but energy estimates dropping |
| Wormhole creation & stabilization | CD-Ω | Pure theory |
The honest assessment: CD-1 is an engineering problem. CD-2 is a hard engineering problem. CD-3 is a physics-into-engineering problem. CD-4 onward is a physics problem. CasDrive's job is to work all of them simultaneously — because breakthroughs do not follow product roadmaps.
CasDrive — Personal Spacecraft. From here to the galaxy.
Get Involved with CasDrive
CasDrive's research is open. Here is how different audiences can engage:
Researchers & Engineers
If you work in propulsion physics, aerospace engineering, materials science, or related fields — our research is published openly. We welcome peer review, collaboration proposals, and constructive criticism.
Enthusiasts & Dreamers
Follow our research publications and design iterations. Every breakthrough and every dead end is documented. The journey toward personal spacecraft is as fascinating as the destination.
Investors & Partners
For partnership and investment inquiries, reach us through our website.
Contact
- Website: casdrive.com