How do ya like me now?
Now that I'm on my way, do you still think I'm crazy standin here today?
Posted on 10/06/2004 8:37:50 AM PDT by -=[_Super_Secret_Agent_]=-
Too hot to handle
In April 1993, the defence magazine Jane's International Defence Review announced the discovery by a British amateur inventor, Maurice Ward, of a thin plastic coating able to withstand temperatures of 2,700 degrees Centigrade
The reason why it was a defence magazine who first published news of This revolutionary invention is that the coating is so resistant to heat that it can make tanks, ships and aircraft impervious to the effects of nuclear weapons at quite close range -- and hence is of great interest to the military mind.
A little later that year the whole nation had an opportunity to see for themselves the effectiveness of Maurice Ward's new paint on BBC Television when it was featured on "Tomorrow's World". Presenter Michael Rodd showed viewers an ordinary chicken's egg that had been painted with the new coating. The paint was so thin it was not visible. Rodd then dramatically donned welder's visor and gauntlets, lit up an oxyacetylene torch, and played the flame directly onto the egg for several minutes.
When he removed the flame, and cracked the egg on the table top, viewers were able to see that the coating was so heat resistant that the egg was still raw and had not even begun to cook.
This invention, a simple paint that can render anything impervious to very high temperatures, has been the holy grail of chemical research for more than fifty years. Teams of scientists in the world's greatest industrial and defence laboratories have poured billions of pounds and hundreds of man-years into the search for such a substance -- a quest which made Ward's discovery even more extraordinary.
Ward's invention is remarkable enough, but the story of how he came to make it, and the resistance he encountered in getting anyone to believe him, is even more remarkable.
Maurice Ward comes from Blackburn and has no professional scientific background. The closest he has come to the chemical industry was when, as a young man, he drove a fork lift truck in the warehouse of ICI. For the past two decades, he has earned a living as a ladies hairdresser.
Part of his income was derived from selling his customers hair preparations such as shampoo, conditioner and hairspray. To maximise his income he rented a small workshop, bought standard chemicals and mixed and bottled his own brand hair products.
In the best traditions of Ealing Comedy, it was when playing around mixing up chemicals in his 'skunk works' that Ward stumbled on the formula that had eluded the finest minds in chemical research.
Realising at once the value of his invention, Ward wrote to Britain's major chemical companies, offering to demonstrate his material to them. Every one sent him the standard brush-off letter they send to cranks and crackpots. After the "Tomorrow's World" demonstration, Ward stopped getting the brush-off and starting getting offers instead.
One consequence of his contacts with chemical companies was that the head of research of ICI's paint laboratory left the firm and went into partnership with Ward to exploit the discovery commercially.
One other interesting consequence is that the large corporations who had rejected his initial approaches in such a knee-jerk fashion, conducted internal inquests to find out what had gone wrong, both with their own research and with their dealings with the outside world.
On the face of it, it was perfectly understandable that Ward's claims should be ignored since he was merely an amateur, with no scientific training and no track record in research.
ICI's own paints laboratory held an internal audit and what they found puts this claim in an entirely different light. For the audit showed that the most scientifically qualified of its research chemists had contributed to the least number of patents, and the fewer scientific qualifications the staff possessed, the greater the number of patents they had contributed to. In the most striking case of all, the person who had contributed to most ICI's patents had no scientific qualifications at all.
It seems that Maurice Ward's greatest strength as a researcher was that he had not been taught how to think.
In the light of examples such as this, the phrase 'Alternative Science' seems less a contradiction in terms and more a harbinger of something that professional science is likely to see more and more of in future.
Oooooooh, ooooooooh!
How do ya like me now?
Now that I'm on my way, do you still think I'm crazy standin here today?
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
Election 2004 threads on FR
It's staggering what this could be used for.
space shuttle, pah -- use it in the next generation of FR flame suits!
Yep, I hope it's true. But like so many other things, it could be mostly hype.
Might actually be able to survive more than a couple minutes on an evolution/drug war/libertarian thread.
joking aside, thanks for posting this -- very interesting and inspiring to see what 'amateurs' are doing in their garages around the world -- may they live long and prosper.
I remember seeing a demonstration of it on camera once. Unbelievable, the guy took a blow torch to a square piece of this stuff and nothing. Not even so much as a scorch mark.
If memory serves it was on a weekly news program possibly even 60 minutes.
Great after action report, btw, Loopy -- might this help ya'll?
DU? Ain't worried about their tepid little torches over there. It's the SMELL that'll do you in though. Ain't enough activated charcoal to filter that much methane and sulfur dioxide out.
I think SS2 would benefit from this kind of paint. What are the temps experienced on spacecraft re-entry ?
Static Test of Hydrogen Peroxide Kerosene Motor
Robert Compton
http://www.ad6uy.com/sac-l5/motor-test.html
"Our present plan for the coming year is to develop an 8'' diameter 500 lb/sec throttleable regeneratively cooled motor. The performance of the H2O2/kerosene motors is not trivial producing the highest density impulse of any usable oxidizer/fuel combination. We hope this report will encourage further development among amateur rocket designers."
Hydrogen delta-V
SSTO delta-V and dense fuels
Henry Spencer
http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen_deltav.html
"A steeper mass line means that at any time after liftoff, the H2O2/kerosene SSTO has lower mass than the LOX/LH2 one, and since they have the same thrust... the H2O2/kerosene SSTO is accelerating faster. If they have the same total delta-V requirement, that last assumption must be wrong: the H2O2/kerosene burn time is shorter.
"But... the biggest penalty on top of the theoretical delta-V is gravity losses, and gravity losses are a function of burn time! The H2O2/kerosene SSTO is accelerating faster, so it has lower gravity losses, and needs less total delta-V. Moreover, that makes its burn time still shorter, and its mass line still steeper, so the difference in acceleration is even larger than it first seems...
"The H2O2/kerosene SSTO is operating in a very steep part of the mass-ratio curve. A 6% saving in delta-V is *not* trivial. For engines with a vacuum Isp of 320, the required mass ratio drops from 20 to 16. Given the aforementioned sophisticated scaling models, at this mass ratio, the H2O2/kerosene SSTO's payload at the same GLOM is now equal to that of the LOX/LH2 design."
a Blast from the Past.
Words alone don't accomplish much.
So, both the man and his invention are 'degree resistant.' How appropriate.
Probably those dastardly oil company skull and bones types who killed off 150 mpg carburetors have something to do with its disappearance. ;') Seems to me that harness racing is only moderately expensive, but it sounds like the perfect hobby for someone who became over-the-night rich...
;')
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