
Starlite - ricardobeat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite
======
yapcguy
[http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-557...](http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-5575,00.html)

> 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.

~~~
justinator
> 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.

So, this person heard a huge, "Whooosh" when Graphene hit the scene too, eh?
"It's just Scotch Tape and pencil doodles!"

I definitely Want To Believe. World-Changing technology always has its
detractors. Remember the airplane? Silly, silly invention.

~~~
idProQuo
The quote is incomplete. Right after all that, he says:

>But rest assured, as of this time I can say that there is at least 1 complete
& superior product in testing, testing that so far is going remarkably well.
So one day there will be a product on the market that will save life's while
also having countless other uses. The inspiration behind this project.... Mr
Maurice Ward

I'm not sure when this comment was written, but perhaps he was talking about
Graphene.

~~~
Indyan
The meeting happened in 2010, going by the fact that it happened one year
before Mr. Ward's death.

------
cromwellian
I'm skeptical. There are a lot of bullshit free-energy and reactionless drive
"inventors" who exhibit the same pattern. Super secretive and paranoid that
the traditional scientific review process will steal their invention, will
only allow third parties to experiment under very controlled conditions, etc,
won't produce working patents, etc. Remember Dean Drive?

I often think they either known they're peddling something bogus and are
straight out charlatans, or they actually really believed in what they have,
but are too afraid of it being debunked.

Science and secrecy don't go together. A material with twice the melting point
of tantalum halfnium carbide sounds like an ablative heat shield to me.

~~~
Eliezer
I remember the Dean Drive. Does anyone else remember the Dean Drive?

~~~
abrahamsen
I didn't:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive)

------
Camillo
What sort of scientific Scrooge chooses to take his invention to the grave
like that? What has he gained in the end?

~~~
alan_cx
Ages ago I spent a fair amount of time considering what would happen if
someone invented a new power source. I was planning to try to write a short
story based on the idea. In my imagination I invented a device the size of a
fridge freezer capable of powering a small town for 100 years. The workings
and science were irrelevant, but the politics of it was what interested me.

I cant find the notes I made now, but essentially I ended up deciding that
something so revolutionary, if proved and accepted as doing what it said on
the tin, would take a life of its own. I came to the conclusion that once
people know of its existence, the inventor will lose all control and become an
instant target. Such inventions are the "babies" of such inventors, so loss of
control is an issue. Becoming a target, more so. I'm not sure what the people
who did the science that lead to nuclear stuff intended or thought, but if it
were me, the idea that my science was used to make such evil devices as
nuclear bombs would at the very least cause me trouble.

Interestingly there is some relevance to what is happening now with the NSA
internet spying issue. People may well look at this sort of behavior and
conclude that there are no limits for certain nation states. So, if a Belgian,
for a random small country example, were to invent such technology, and say
this person decided that only small poor countries could have access to it in
order to equalize small poor countries with rich ones, how might the likes of
China, UK, USA, India, etc, react to that? What would be their limit to
acquire such technology? The second you deploy such a unit, spies would be all
over it. Perhaps, war. So in the end, unless you do as told, your good might
end up slaughtering millions.

Now, I'm not saying that starlite was or is for real, or that the inventor
thought this way, but I can certainly see why such an inventor might be so
paranoid as to get in to a position where the secret dies with him.

Of course I am very open to the idea that this says more about my personal
psychology that any general point...

~~~
jacquesm
That's more or less the premise of Atlas Shrugged. John Galt (one of the
protagonists) invents a device just like that.

~~~
jackgavigan
In the sci-fi novel 'Friday', Robert Heinlein writes about a physicist named
Daniel Shipstone who realised that 'the problem was not a shortage of energy
but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in
wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever
found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things.
Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in
amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.'

In the story, Shipstone quits his job, retreats to his basement and invents a
technology that packs 'more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller
mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved
storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an
"improved firecracker."'

Like Ward and Musk [1], Shipstone eschews patenting his new technology in
order to deny others the opportunity to steal it (or tie him up in court
cases) and instead begins manufacturing the devices (eponymously named
"Shipstones") which end up becoming ubiquitous, powering everything from
flashlights and automobiles, to households and ocean-going ships. The company
he founds becomes the largest and most powerful industrial conglomerate in the
galaxy and the method of manufacturing Shipstones remains a closely-held
secret.

[1: [http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-
patents-2012-11](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-patents-2012-11) ]

~~~
kamaal
Elon Musk is by no means the first person to get that realization.

As a theme only things that can be easily reproduced by looking at the very
physical nature are patented. If something is easy to reproduce by just
looking at the idea or invention itself, that is the kind of thing that is
commonly patented. Why else do you think the patent ecosystem if full of
crappiest and most obvious patents possible.

It hardly makes any sense to patent some thing that is genuinely difficult to
figure out otherwise.

~~~
_delirium
You don't even need a scientific breakthrough or difficult bit of engineering
to successfully use that strategy. Coca-Cola is one of the more famous cases
of a company that chose to keep its "invention" secret rather than disclose it
with patent filings. It was common at the time to patent the formulations of
"patent medicines", and the 1890s version of Coke was indeed patented, but
later formulations were deliberately not patented, in order to keep them
secret.

------
tomelders
I remember this being on Tomorrows World (which is a show that needs to come
back), and practically every year that memory pops into my head and I wonder
whatever happened to it. I think the segment ended with him showing it to
NASA.

If I remember correctly, he created it in his garden shed using off the shelf
products that you could buy on the high street, and he just started mixing
them together and testing the results... and I think hairspray was mentioned
as being an important ingredient.

Or maybe my mind is full of holes.

~~~
duylamnguyenngo
Sounds like a recipe for amateur experimentation...or a real Walter White.

------
eksith
This sounds an awful lot like Firepaste
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Hurtubise#Firepaste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Hurtubise#Firepaste)

There seems to be a common trend among these types of inventors that border on
paranoia, eccentricity and at the same time, accidental brilliance.

------
gmaslov
Sounds like a situation that the patent system was supposedly designed to
prevent. But, from the article linked by yapcguy:

> He refused to patent the recipe as that would mean making it public and
> risking its theft

Wouldn't patenting the formula _prevent_ it from being "stolen"? Or is our
patent system truly good for nothing at all?

~~~
vitno
SpaceX does not patent any of their stuff for the same reason; it can be
stolen by people outside of the country and the patent is essentially
directions on how to do so.

~~~
mercuryrising
I forget the quote exactly, but there was an interview with Elon and the lady
was asking him about not patenting things at SpaceX. He said something along
the lines of "Patents aren't going to do you much good when your competitors
are other country's governments".

~~~
jackgavigan
"We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition
is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese
would just use them as a recipe book."

Source: [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-
qa/al...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/)

~~~
mercuryrising
I'm sure he's said it a few times. This is the one I was referring to -

> Even more so when he tells us that none of the design innovations in the
> rocket are patented. “Since our primary competitors are national
> governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable,”

[http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/27/transforming-
transportation-e...](http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/27/transforming-
transportation-elon-musk-at-ted2013/)

------
cwsteinbach
Starlite, meet FOGBANK:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank)

~~~
cwsteinbach
In 1996, the US government decided that large numbers of its nuclear weapons
would require replacement, refurbishing, or decommissioning. Accordingly, the
Department of Energy set up a refurbishment program aimed at extending the
service lives of older nuclear weapons. In 2000, the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) specified a life-extension program for W76 warheads that
would enable them to remain in service until at least 2040.[2]

It was soon realized that the FOGBANK material was a potential source of
problems for the program, as few records of its manufacturing process had been
retained when it was originally manufactured in the 1980s, and nearly all
staff members who had expertise in its production had either retired or left
the agency. The NNSA briefly investigated sourcing a substitute for FOGBANK,
but eventually decided that since FOGBANK had been produced previously, they
would be able to repeat it.[2] Additionally, "Los Alamos computer simulations
at that time were not sophisticated enough to determine conclusively that an
alternate material would function as effectively as Fogbank," according to a
Los Alamos publication.[3]

~~~
icambron
Secrecy: not always a good idea.

------
kefs
Here is the late Maurice Ward's YouTube channel..

[https://www.youtube.com/user/mauricewardstarlite/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/mauricewardstarlite/videos)

~~~
nperson
Here's a site I've built for an artist who did "Episodes of Starlite"
[http://stopthebus.org/starlite](http://stopthebus.org/starlite).

------
yogrish
Just read abt Starlite and other Amazing man made substances at this URL thru
reddit. [http://listverse.com/2013/06/20/10-awesome-man-made-
substanc...](http://listverse.com/2013/06/20/10-awesome-man-made-substances/)

~~~
adaml_623
Why the downvotes? The other 9 substances on that link are just as
interesting.

I recommend people have a look. The video of the amorphous metal is quite
interesting.

(Yogrish. I saw the link elsewhere first as well but maybe we're not meant to
use the R word here)

~~~
yogrish
Didn't know about R word. sure will take care of it next time.

------
jackgavigan
A cautionary tale for any aspiring entrepreneur who won't share their world-
changing idea without a signed NDA.

------
throwaway_yy2Di
_Ward certainly believes in his product, claiming publicly that it could have
prevented the space shuttle disasters. 'Starlite has a Q-value [an energy
absorption rating] of 2,470. The space shuttle tiles have a Q-value of 1.' Not
only that, but because Starlite is so lightweight – 1mm thick, compared to
75mm for the space tiles – it's actually '2,470 x 75 times better'._

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-
the-n...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-
blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html)

What is a "Q-value" in this usage?

~~~
jzwinck
Q is the heat transfer rate; see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer_coefficient](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer_coefficient)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
Thanks! But, if that's the case, a higher value means a worse insulator, so
why would he brag about that?

(It's also a dimensionful quantity, but the reported value has no units --
maybe it's relative to some specific value...)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
I think it's more likely to be a measure of heat _absorbed_ , rather than heat
_transferred_ across a boundary. (The _Telegraph_ 's wording is "an energy
absorption rating"). Starlite is apparently ablative; if this means an
endothermic phase change -- the organic polymers vaporizing, without
combusting -- it could absorb an extremely large amount of heat. A space
shuttle tile is non-ablative (I think?), and can absorb heat only by
increasing temperature.

------
Elrac
I call bullshit.

Here's a list of the points in the article that jumped out at me as
uninformative, pseudo-scientific or misleading:

> a laser beam producing a temperature of 10,000 degrees Celsius.

Scientifically, that's meaningless. It's meant to convey a powerful heat
source to the reader, but as another reader pointed out, a strong focused
light source on a bit of well-insulated black material might be able to raise
it to several thousand degrees; the same source pointed at a well-polished
mirror could leave it cold to the touch. In other words, the "10,000" degree
figure tells us nothing useful.

> (from the allegedly supporting New Scientist article cited on the talk
> page): The first thing Lewis and his colleagues did was fire powerful laser
> pulses at the material.

What person with scientific training would set up a laser to conduct his first
test on an unknown material? I admit to not being a professional NASA egghead,
but if confronted with a substance alleged to be highly heat resistant, I'd
start off by holding a sample of it into a Bunsen burner flame, or better yet
pop it into a crucible and into a high-temperature furnace.

If a temperature of 10,000°C had really been achieved, that would have been
quite impressive: according to elswhere in Wikipedia, the "best" known heat-
resistant ceramics lose stability around 3,000°C.

This Tech Radar article [http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/future-
tech/10-m...](http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/future-
tech/10-mindblowing-uses-for-the-world-changing-substance-that-never-
was-1156955) claims a more modest 2500°, achieved with a blowtorch and not a
laser. What are we to believe?

As a (hypothetical) egghead, I would certainly object on moral grounds to
using an egg for a scientific test of heat resistance. I would instead strive
to measure the two characteristics actually relevant to heat resistance,
namely thermal conductivity and thermally induced ablation.

As an amateur scientist completely unprepared for such a test and working out
of an ordinary household, I would have urged the inventor to use his amazing
compound to coat not a chicken's egg but the tip of a thermometer. And I would
have attacked this assembly not with a laser but with a burning match. And I
would have reported on how much of a rise in temperature was observed, and in
which time.

Certainly no non-crackpot scientist would subject his or anyone's hand to a
blowtorching without considerably more convincing previous tests. But maybe
that claim about the human hand was just rhetoric - it's hard to tell.

Later in the supporting article, the claim is toned down to a much more modest
1000°C. Still, there's a fundamental problem here with the basic chemistry:

Plastics, or more formally polymers, are organic compounds, chemically held
together by covalent bonds. Because of the physics that underlies chemistry,
covalent bonds cannot be as heat-resistant as ionic bonds (as found in salts
and other inorganic compounds). All-organic diamond is the hardest substance
known to man (I think) but burns at relatively low temperatures. High-
temperature plastics break down at around 150°C.

If the compound contained a mix of polymers, as stated, then it contained some
organic compounds with known low melting/burning points. Mixing several such
compounds doesn't make any of them more heat resistant; their chemical
properties (including heat resistance) would not be changed unless you'd
created new and different compounds that would then _not_ be polymers.
Similarly, mixing in about 10% ceramics might change the compound's mechanical
properties, and polymer-ceramic composites are indeed useful materials for
this reason, but it doesn't change the fact that part of the mix is low-
melting, burning, smoking plastic.

I'm sorely tempted to pick a fight on the Wikipedia Talk page as well, where
the most ardent defender of the Starlite story lambastes skeptical commenters
as "bigoted" and "ignorant."

~~~
DanBC
> a strong focused light source on a bit of well-insulated black material
> might be able to raise it to several thousand degrees;

Here's some well focused sunlight. It gets to 3500 C. Apparently, "nothing is
known that can withstand this".

> Certainly no non-crackpot scientist would subject his or anyone's hand to a
> blowtorching without considerably more convincing previous tests. But maybe
> that claim about the human hand was just rhetoric - it's hard to tell.

He appeared on a BBC Radio four programme many years ago (Start the Week with
Melvyn Bragg) where they used a blow torch on the material and someone touched
the back of it immediately after the torch was turned off.

------
spyder
Is this the same? Man torches hand with 7000+ degree flame and then eats the
material:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7NVC23Stw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7NVC23Stw)

------
adamnemecek
It kind of blows my mind that one (presumably) cannot reverse engineer things
like this.

~~~
brazzy
Without a sample, it's not surprising.

~~~
scotty79
Noone can reverse engineer WD40 with plenty of samples.

~~~
nl
What do you mean? There are plenty of WD40-work-a-likes on the market.

Additionally, the ingredients to WD40 are on Wikipedia[1] and Wired had a mass
spectroscopy done and published even more precise details[2].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40#Formulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40#Formulation)

[2]
[http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/st_w...](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/st_whatsinside)

~~~
scotty79
You are right. My mistake. Second link you provided is very informative.

Bonus: What people think they can use WD40 for:
[http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/wd-40.asp](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/wd-40.asp)

~~~
jakobe
It's amazing how many people use WD40 as a lubricant. It's good for loosening
stuck parts, but using it as a lubricant will wear parts quickly.

~~~
nemo
Interestingly, WD40 is a lubricant. I used to think that since it was a
penetrating oil/water sealant it wasn't a lubricant, but that's not actually
the case. They even have a "myth" that discusses the idea floating out there
that WD40 isn't a lubricant.

[http://wd40.com/about-us/myths-legends-fun-facts/](http://wd40.com/about-
us/myths-legends-fun-facts/)

~~~
scotty79
I think it's just not very good lubricant. It wears off pretty quickly if you
use it to lubricate your bicycle.

~~~
nl
It's _terrible_ to use it on bike chains.

It will provide some lubrication for a while, true. But it will also dissolve
any of the proper lube that is there, so when the WD40 is chopped up by the
chain you'll be left with nothing.

I like the Shimano PTFE dry lube[1] but there are plenty of other brands.

[1][http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/au/en/shimano-dry-
lube/rp...](http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/au/en/shimano-dry-lube/rp-
prod27242)

------
brennenHN
This would make for a great mystery novel.

------
alt_f4
Sounds like vaporware

~~~
pje
Duke Nukem: Starlite

------
Wingman4l7
Sounds like aerogel.

~~~
lutusp
Yes, except that aerogel is well-understood, both as to composition and
behavior. This stuff is a first-class mystery. Too bad the inventor, good at
science, was so bad at business.

