The Story of Starlite, the 'Blast Proof' Material (bbc.com)

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: The BBC has posted an interesting video series on "Starlite," a white paste developed in the 1970s and 1980s by British hairdresser Maurice Ward that could completely insulate any object it coated, like a raw egg or a piece of cardboard, against extreme heat sources -- even acetylene torches, nuclear blasts and lasers capable of heating an object to 10,000 degrees Celsius. Anything Starlite paste was smeared on could withstand extreme heat exposure without the coated object melting or combusting or heating at all in the process. The heat-proof paste got a lot of attention around the world when it was demonstrated on the BBC's Tomorrow's World TV program in 1990. Ward was an eccentric inventor -- not a classically trained scientist -- who came up with the formula for Starlite by experimenting wildly with different substances. He got the initial idea for Starlite when he was burning garbage in his backyard one day and one particular piece of garbage simply would not burn at all. Ward thought that Starlite would be worth billions when commercialized. He let NASA and other scientists test Starlite -- it did work as advertised -- but never allowed anyone to retain a sample of the substance, fearing that it could be reverse engineered. Starlite never was commercialized properly, and Ward died in 2011 without making the millions or billions he had imagined he would. Sadly, Ward took the chemical formula for Starlite to his grave with him. To this day, nobody knows the exact chemical composition of Starlite, or how one might go about recreating the substance.

Comments

Nuclear blasts? Lasers?

[Mathinker]

nuclear blasts and lasers

There are limits as to how well ordinary matter can resist the ionization of its electrons. As far as I know, energetic enough photons of the correct frequencies can convert anything into plasma.

Re:Nuclear blasts? Lasers?

[arglebargle_xiv]

The surrounding discussion indicates something ablative, or at least some form of sacrificial material in general:

Mr Ward came to my lab about a year before his death needing help to turn what was essentially a party trick into a useable & commercialy viable product. The problem he had was although the powder component did exactly as it said on the tin, he had found no way of applying a lasting coating. All he really has was some powder mixed with PVA glue, the problem being that although you could apply it to certain objects it's longevity was no more than 2 weeks. While testing we discovered that a sample he'd kept for almost 10 years could be destroyed in a matter of minutes under a methylacetylene-propadiene propane blowtorch. Unfortunately after many samples & tests we where unable to find a effective application method & we parted company on good terms. Sadly this is the true reason why Mr Ward was never able to sell or bring his incomplete product to market

As for the nuke-proof claims? Pure fantasy, unless you're quite a long distance from ground zero, but in that case vehicular armour or similar will provide the same level of protection.

Re:Nuclear blasts? Lasers?

[chill]

Actually, on the other hand, it was tested by the U.S. Military at the White Sands Missile Testing Range by subjecting it to a 5-kiloton non-nuclear explosion. It was also subjected to -- and passed -- tests by the U.K. nuclear weapons agency as well as tested involving high intensity pulse lasers.

Watch the video series, it is very interesting.

Re:Patents

[NicknameUnavailable]

Patents haven't worked for people without millions to defend them for years.

Re:Patents

[GuB-42]

Patents prevent commercialization of those copies for a limited* period.

* For practically infinite values of "limited".

Patents are limited to 20 years, hardly unlimited. We are seeing the result of expired patent everyday. If you see a barrage of knockoffs of a popular product seemingly appearing out of nowhere, it usually mean its patent has expired. Another well discussed result of expiring patents are generic drugs.

You may be confusing patents with copyright, for with every work published after and including Mickey Mouse gets effectively unlimited protection.

Just watch the BBC videos for facts

[Moskit]

Just watch the BBC series of videos to get actual information.

Material was tested by Ministry of Defense, they used 4kt nuclear bomb equivalent. Goal of material was to disperse heat (thermal energy), provided it withstands the shockwave. There is also many more details available on lasers (tested energy), view of the inventor on patents (from an interview)...

Re:Patents

[bluefoxlucid]

That's because pharmaceutical drugs have an inverse relationship between usefulness and cost.

It costs a penny to manufacture a pill, but $300 million to get it tested for safety and efficacy--and 90% of drugs that make it to clinical trials turn out to have intolerable side-effects, so patients won't use them, so they fail. $3Bn to find a good drug.

This happens because you can't tell what drugs do by looking at them. There's a chemical compound--n-methyl-alpha-methyl-beta-hydroxide-phenethylamine--which in its (1R,2S) configuration acts as a systemic adrenal stimulant. If you remove a single oxygen atom, it becomes n-methyl-alpha-methyl-phenethylamine. If the alpha-methyl group is leaned away from you (phenethylamine on the left, alpha-methyl on the bottom), it's a harmless nasal decongestant; if it's leaned toward you, it's d-Methamphetamine. If you bind a CO2 to the 3 and 4 positions on the phenethylamine ring, it's MDMA and will destroy your serotonin system.

Notice one of these was "harmless, does nothing in relatively-high doses" because a bond was tilted a little in one direction, versus "will totally fuck you up and cause brain damage and severe addiction if you regularly take 2-3x as much as necessary to stay awake for 30 goddamn hours" for leaning the bond in the other direction.

One compound we found will kill you immediately at micro-doses in a certain chirality.

We don't know what kind of long-term damage these drugs are doing, so we test on rats for 2-3 years, then on isolated human tissue, then at high doses in preclinical trials to check safety when we're pretty sure we won't seriously injure people. There's a 3-year follow-up after filing hundreds of thousands of pages of data with the FDA for approval: you have to get more data from the drug in use on actual patients.

So what if you made a new ADHD drug?

It's expensive...kind of. $20/pill is pricey. I actually think they should bank on re-standardization, e.g. $5/pill but try to get a bigger market--although people also hate pharmaceutical companies for pushing doctors and patients to move onto their new drugs. If it's safe and it works, you can try it as a front-line treatment to help disperse those R&D costs, right? Why not?

A lot of people have ADHD. ADHD drugs disperse cost extremely well.

What about a Hepatitis-C drug?

Yeah, few people have Hepatitis-C, and the drug cures it in 3 months. You're not going to sell very many pills in total, even selling to everyone. If you get a lot of market share up front, you're going to eradicate the disease and kill your market. That's going to be one hell of an expensive drug.

In this case, a government bail-out seems fine by me: you made a drug that can totally eradicate a disease, and it only cost $3 billion! You can sell it for $90k/pill or we can buy it from you outright.

...then you have the Shkrelis.

Several pharmaceuticals--Mylan's Epipens, Shkreli's toxoplasmosis pills, one generic drug that got marked up to $40k after being bought, and even athsma inhalers--get big numbers due to rent seeking. Pass a law requiring Epipens in schools and the price jumps up for no reason. "We're going to $1 billion, baby!" total profit seeking. Mismanage R&D into new applications for an old drug and jack up the price to recover. Inhalers and insulin injectors use old, cheap drugs in constantly-tweaked new delivery devices, artificially maintaining patents (devices are expensive to manufacture in small batches).

These people are unscrupulous con artists who prey on the lives of the weak and vulnerable. They need their toys taken away.