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Conventional rockets are not a suitable technology for deep space missions.Chemical rockets require a very large weight of propellant, travel very slowlycompared to light speed, and require significant energy to maintain operationover periods of years. For example, the 722 kg Voyager spacecraft required13,600 kg of propellant to launch and would take about 80,000 years to reachthe nearest star, Proxima Centauri, about 4.3 light years away. There have beenvarious attempts at developing ideas on which one might base a spacecraft thatwould permit deep space travel, such as spacewarps. In this paper we consideranother suggestion from science fiction and explore how the quantum vacuummight be utilized in the creation of a novel spacecraft. The spacecraft isbased on the dynamic Casimir effect, in which electromagnetic radiation isemitted when an uncharged mirror is properly accelerated in the vacuum. Theradiative reaction produces a dissipative force on the mirror that tends toresist the acceleration of the mirror. This force can be used to accelerate aspacecraft attached to the mirror. We also show that, in principal, one couldobtain the power to operate the accelerated mirror in such a spacecraft usingenergy extracted from the quantum vacuum using the standard Casimir effectwitha parallel plate geometry. Unfortunately the method as currently conceivedgenerates a miniscule thrust, and is no more practical than a spacewarp, yet itdoes provide an interesting demonstration of our current understanding of thephysics of the quantized electromagnetic field in vacuum.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

A Gedanken Spacecraft that Operates Using the Quantum Vacuum (Dynamic Casimir Effect)