Explained: Starlite



The intriguing story and mystery behind Starlite and it’s creator, Maurice Ward.

Sorry this took a while, I took time making sure it was my best yet.

Maurice Interview:- http://www.stevenrinehart.com/uploads/MauriceWard-Starlite.mp3
Starlite YouTube channel:- https://www.youtube.com/user/mauricewardstarlite

SOURCES:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428641.700-the-power-of-cool-whatever-became-of-starlite/
http://isciencemag.co.uk/features/the-secret-life-of-starlite/
https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/8-1988-boeing-737-236-g-bgjl-22-august-1985
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/17/3026074/starlite-maurice-ward-plastic-fireproof
http://mauricewardstarlite.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/hello-one-and-all.html

MUSIC:
“Mesmerize” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Canon in D Major Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Curtain effect by AA VFX – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCilPIl-SwFbtsoH8WLnvlfA
By NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48792468
By Sonia Sevilla – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32443821
By Eugene Pivovarov – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8628984
By Pedro Aragão – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29024900

source

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32 Comments

  1. I’d like to know is what classified material is used on Airforce 1 that repels radiation, combine it with Starlite, build a ship and move to a planet without greedy bastards.

  2. Unfortunately, these demonstrations – as well as those by Troy Hurtiubise for his similar 'firepaste' – are clearly sleight of hand, as convection is a thing. Even if the insulation of the material itself were perfect, it wouldn't protect the side of your hands (or the eggs) exposed to the superheated air a few millimeters from the flame itself, around the edges of the material.
    That, and the fact that both James Randi and Penn Gillette have repeatedly demonstrated how the illusion in question works.

  3. Sounds like if it was real it had other problems that made it useless such as rapid degradation over time, couldn't handle things like exposure to water, or was too brittle like the Space Shuttle's heat shield tiles.

    It's SUPER easy to create aerogels with similar properties. The problem is: they are brittle or become useless when exposed to excess moisture. We are only just getting to the point where we can modify the chemistry in a way that deals with these problems.

    It's unlikely that the formula was never discovered. At my school, chemistry majors were all given a vial of an unknown material and had to identify its composition to graduate. Identifying materials/compounds is a fairly standard thing. There is a whole branch of science called spectroscopy that teaches you how to identify things based on how they interact with energy. Performing solubility and chemical reactivity tests, using spectroscopy, and using basic scientific techniques (measuring density and simply looking at the structure under a microscope) will allow you to easily determine composition. A well trained scientist would be able to present findings within an hour with even a small sample.

  4. Thermashield got the rights from his estate and are making it now. Right now. As of this year.

    I think the problem is that once you know the substances it's likely stupid easy to replicate: some random YouTuber (see comments) even made a 5%ish version of it.

    It's not that it was actually ever lost, just that negotiations are complicated and his daughter wasn't a showboat.

  5. as regards caa / mod – that motive stated absolutly correct – I called it "Pi*LHyT" ( 3-d aircraft // space – craft position display )) – and the documentation could be called sparse – why should I need reams of design data to build it . Thus when police – beacham , parr curtis atkinson edwards raided to steal the working model – by then requireing to consider other items – taken apart . – So it went to crown court – THEY wanted it dealt with at magestrates court where the warrant issued from

    Not told them – that was 1989 – yep 30 years ago – — if it to be suppressed – why should they gloat as they had the option for letter so that I could and then would make it for them -being thus paid in that capacity

    They wanted it only for themselves – nowt for the inventor – so they thus got nowt

  6. I am very sure That This Starlite is Being Used in the vehicle that transport the Queen the President surely
    Just if you look in the paper IF the President or Queen vehicle has made any modification in the last year Starting When The Starlite Has been discovered.
    You know how the Starlite look (the color could be changed,but You Get the Idea!)
    (The vehicle thing is the most noticeable modification to our eyes .if could be used in the bunker,the President home…….)

  7. Also and Truly the Starlite is being used by the UK or USA just in some place sensitive all what we Have To Do is Watching carefully when ever there is a bombing or explosing in some government Area
    I hope that Something occur and could create suspicious about the effect
    If you know what I am talking about
    Nothing could be hidden forever you know?
    Everything must have come to an end
    Just observe and focus in everyday government activitie

  8. Well if Hackers could hack into the security of defence of the UK or USA it would be a great achievement if they tell the Secret of The Starlite which is hidden in the Archieve

  9. How can an Englishman mispronounce "Maurice" as not being like "Morris"? It's our default! A hairdresser might be called "Maur-ees", but never a Yorkshireman or a Geordie! I'm all for taking the piss out of people with girly names, but there's nobody girly in Yorkshire! Even our women, we only fuck 'em cos we're too scared of fighting 'em.

    His accent BTW is mid-way, both. Yorkshire with Northumbrian influences or the other way round. Dunno if there's anywhere specifically that sounds like that, accents are like genes, they tend not to just average-out when you mix them, but produce new, novel ones.

    NASA have aerogels and aerofoams. They are fantastic insulators with similar egg-protecting properties. The first aerogel was created in the 1930s. Aerogel has almost no weight, it's a structure of a solid that's almost entirely gaps, empty. Aerogels can be made of different substances. Some of them look like a solidified cloud, there's almost nothing there, denser in the middle but the edges seem to fade into nothing, even in a solid, cube-shaped block with firm edges. They're created by removing the liquid from a gel (a gel is a colloid of liquid + solid), but without letting capillary action destroy the solid structure as the liquid leaves. It's done by "supercritical drying".

    I can understand his reticence. Boeing spent 6 years, I think, trying to trick him into leaving behind a sample they could put under the microscope and in the mass spectrometer. The substance has a value of billions if defence contractors got hold of it. However much of a hairdresser he was, the BBC wouldn't fake a demonstration like that. Seems like it worked.

    As far as Scenario 2 goes, you're not wrong. The SR-71 Blackbird bomber became famous in the early 1990s as cool high-tech thing that air forces had. It had been in service since 1964! In complete secrecy, except to the many pilots, engineers, and people who made it. Still the public had no idea.

    It's no surprise his family can't reproduce it. How many old men witter on at their descendants about what they've got in the shed, to complete indifference and patronising nods? Doesn't mean they listened, or would have been capable of understanding if they had.

    Now Maurice ("Morris") is dead, being able to get hold of a sample or two would be greatly advantageous in reproducing it. Although he managed to keep hold of it during his life, no mysterious "burglaries" (or "burglarisations" if you're from Burgerland) ever stole any. No safe can keep out somebody who has an unlimited amount of time to attack it. And a cutting torch isn't going to worry Starlite!

  10. Awww I remember watching that episode of Tomorrow's World… I've never since considered what happened to that invention, although I reckon intumescent materials like Starlite have been long since figured out and there really isn't as much mystery to it as we'd like to think

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