Applying to Study Tissue Rejuvenation with an NIH STTR Grant through the National Institute on Aging (PA-27-102) with Project PALINGENESIS

The PALINGENESIS Program Charter.

Many years ago the SENS Research institute embarked on a bold mission to study the origin of diseases by considering aging as a pathology that could be studied and remedied. The program structured the causes of aging through the lens of tissue damage, the accumulation of molecules in tissue that cause stiffening and wrinkles (advanced glycation endproducts), and even through the lens of telomere destabilization and DNA damage.

Many years ago there was talk at the WEF that within years we would have nanomedicines that could cure diseases, we would be 3d printing organs that could be replaced, and we would even have the ability to cure infertility with artificial wombs. Many years has passed and so in my view, since science is a collaborative effort rather than one that should be expected to go through only monolithic institutions, and I have a goal to decentralize and open source scientific research, I've decided to try to pick up where this research has left off. It shouldn't be a requirement to rely on multinational corporations or institutions alone to progress our collective knowledge.

One example here is the mishandling of the covid pandemic. Studies showed a high success rate for point of access care especially when therapies were targeted like monoclonal antibodies. In fact, Nordic countries which had strong local infrastructure and universal point of access care without social distancing even outperformed countries which attempted a one-size-fits all strategy of social distancing and preventative measures to attempt to stop everybody from getting sick over the course of the pandemic. A better model would be to build the local and community infrastructure to handle problems as they arise and for when members of the public inevitably do get sick that a futile attempt at isolating every member of the public to prevent them from getting sick.

That does not mean a deregulation of sensitive research - I am currently scoping out potential university partners and experts for this project.

The plans are to start with the development of a novel measurement paradigm. Cellular senescence and remodeling of the dermal extracellular matrix are two of the best

characterized forms of age-related damage in human skin, yet no validated method measures them together in intact tissue without staining it. Skin aging is graded clinically with visual scales, and senescence is measured by staining biopsies, which destroys the tissue and cannot follow the same site over time. Label-free multiphoton microscopy can measure both kinds of damage from endogenous contrast. Second-harmonic generation (SHG) reports collagen content and organization, and autofluorescence of the metabolic cofactors NAD(P)H and FAD reports cellular metabolic state.

Both signals change with age, but they have mostly been studied one at a time, in small cohorts, with analysis methods that differ between laboratories. Dreamscape Systems Inc. proposes to combine them into a single Dermal Aging Index, produced by a standardized acquisition protocol and a

machine learning pipeline, and to test in Phase I whether the index tracks chronological age and molecular senescence burden in human skin. The study images 72 specimens of deidentified discarded surgical skin from donors aged 20 years and older, stratified by age and balanced by sex, on an established multiphoton and fluorescence lifetime imaging system at the research institution partner. Matched tissue from each specimen is stained for p16INK4a, p21, Lamin B1, and senescence-associated beta-galactosidase and scored by a blinded pathologist. Aim 1 establishes the reproducibility of each imaging feature. Aim 2 builds the index and tests its association with age under nested cross-validation. Aim 3 tests its association with senescence burden and, as an exploratory measure, its response to a senolytic in paired skin explants. A successful Phase I delivers a validated, pre-specified quantitative readout that Phase II will carry into living volunteers on a compact instrument, for use as an objective endpoint in dermatology, cosmetic, and senotherapeutic

studies.

Letter of support for Project PALINGENESIS.

Applying for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) 2027 Grant with Project StarSplice Direct Fusion Drive

A Concept Diagram of the StarSplice Direct Fusion Drive.

A while ago, the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration reactor was invented by Samuel A. Cohen, which uses a linear magnetic confinement system to generate thrust by nuclear fusion - this was the inception of the Direct Fusion Drive concept. Since then, companies like Pulsar Fusion through their Sunbird program have attempted to commercialize this technology for deep space flights:

https://pulsarfusion.com/sunbird-fusion-propulsion/

I reviewed this design from Pulsar Fusion but it does not appear that there is much data on this and I am skeptical of some of their claims. This led me to explore different possible architectures and designs for direct fusion propulsion. Still, while fusion struggles to find a role in domestic energy production and there is a greater focus on Modular Thorium Fission designs (preferred because it is a non-fissile and abundant energy source that is more easily controlled especially in pellet form), one of the areas it could be best used is in propulsion for deep space missions where break-even fusion is not required for it to be useful.

After reviewing this I decided to try my hand at devising a Direct Fusion Drive with an alternative architecture, and I decided to reach out to Dr. Egedal at the Department of Physics at University of Winsconsin as well as researchers at UAH.

Correspondence with Dr. Egedal.

Endorsement for Project StarSplice from UAH.

Dreamscape Systems is studying a new kind of propulsion concept called Project StarSplice to be submitted to NASA's 2027 NAIC grant. The goal is to use fusion, the process that powers the Sun, to push uncrewed spacecraft across the solar system far faster and more efficiently than today's rockets or ion thrusters allow. StarSplice is built on an unusual idea. It takes the biggest weakness of an older fusion design that has been largely abandoned and turns it into the engine's exhaust which is similar in principle to Sunbird but with a different architecture.

Fusion happens when light atoms are forced together hard enough to merge, releasing large amounts of energy. StarSplice would use deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen found in ordinary seawater. Getting deuterium atoms to fuse means heating the fuel to roughly 500 million degrees Celsius, more than thirty times hotter than the center of the Sun. At that temperature, the fuel becomes plasma, a gas so hot that its atoms have been stripped into electrically charged particles. No material wall can hold it, so engineers use magnetic fields instead. Charged particles cannot easily cross magnetic field lines, and they spiral along them instead, like beads sliding along a wire.

One of the oldest ways to trap plasma this way is called a magnetic mirror - a straight tube of magnetic field with an extra-strong magnet at each end. As a spiraling particle moves toward either end, the stronger field pushes back on it and turns it around, much as a ball rolling up a steep hill slows, stops, and rolls back down. The particle bounces back and forth between the two ends, trapped. Particles traveling almost straight along the tube are not turned back, and they escape out the ends. For a fusion power plant, that constant leak wastes energy, and it is the main reason mirrors fell out of favor in the 1980s.

For a rocket, that leak is exactly what you want, because escaping particles are exhaust. StarSplice makes the mirror lopsided on purpose. The magnet at the back is weaker, so most escaping plasma leaves there and is steered out of the engine by a magnetic nozzle, a shaped field that works like the bell of a conventional rocket. The magnet at the front is stronger, so less plasma escapes there. What does escape runs into a direct energy converter, a set of electrically charged grids that slow the incoming particles and collect their energy as electricity, with no turbine or steam cycle in between. The design point calls for exhaust leaving at about 200 kilometers per second, roughly 45 times faster than the best chemical rockets, producing a gentle but continuous push of about 10 newtons, about the weight of a one-kilogram bag of sugar.

The timing matters because the key pieces now exist separately. In 2024, the University of Wisconsin's WHAM experiment held plasma in a mirror using 17-tesla magnets, the strongest field yet applied to a confined plasma, built with new high-temperature superconductors.

Direct energy converters recovered nearly half the energy of escaping plasma in laboratory tests decades ago, and an early demonstration on WHAM was announced in June 2026, though it has not yet been peer reviewed. What no one has studied is how a mirror built unevenly on purpose would behave in the conditions these new machines reach.

The best-known fusion rocket concept today for its weight is consequently the Direct Fusion Drive, which makes it excellent for deep space missions. It holds its plasma in a closed, self-contained loop of magnetic field, heats it with a rotating magnetic field, and makes electricity by turning heat into power, much like a conventional power plant. StarSplice differs at each step. Its magnetic field lines are open at both ends. It heats the plasma by firing beams of fast-moving atoms into it. Its electricity comes straight from escaping particles rather than from heat. Much of the physics StarSplice depends on has already been shown to work in the laboratory but has never been applied or proposed as a propulsion concept.

In its current form, fusion returns only one to two percent of the energy the heating beams put in, so the engine would need a separate onboard power source to keep running. Its fuel also gives off substantial neutron radiation, which limits it to uncrewed missions. StarSplice is a concept under study, not a working engine yet.

The proposed nine-month study will answer three questions. Is there a realistic path to fusion supplying more of its own power? Can the whole system be light enough to beat nuclear electric propulsion, where a nuclear reactor powers electric thrusters, today's leading option for deep space? And does a lopsided mirror stay stable, with its escaping energy going where the design needs it? Deployment, refinement, and study of these designs will also benefit the study of fusion for domestic energy production in the future.

Partnership with NCSU on Project CRUCIBLE

Partnership letter with NCSU for Project CRUCIBLE (Conductive Refractory Ultra-temperature Components for Integrated Broadband Low-loss Environments).

Radio energy travels down the inside of waveguides, and for the antenna to work, the pipe has to hold its shape at temperature and carry the signal without losing much of it along the way. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions in extreme environments (like re-entry vehicles for example). The metals that hold their shape when things get hot, including niobium, tantalum, molybdenum, and tungsten, conduct electricity less well than copper. Swap in the heat-tolerant metal and you keep the geometry but give up signal.

Project CRUCIBLE starts from a less obvious observation about where the loss actually comes from. At the frequencies involved, the electrical current does not flow through the bulk of the metal. It flows in a skin near the surface roughly a micron deep, which is about a fiftieth the width of a human hair. Parts made by 3D printing come out of the machine with surface texture on that same scale or larger. The current has to travel over that texture, and the extra distance costs signal.

Once you frame it that way, the important question changes. It stops being which metal to choose and becomes how smooth the inside of the channel can be made. That matters because these are closed internal passages, so ordinary polishing tools cannot reach them. The work for Project CRUCIBLE covers finishing methods that flow abrasive or chemistry through the part, thin conductive liners that survive the operating temperature, and oxidation protection, since some of these metals burn readily in air well below the temperature at which they lose strength.