Flame Proof - Starlite (can withstand temperatures of 2,700 degrees Centigrade)

alternative science ^

[PatrickHenry]

From the article:
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.

Oooooooh, ooooooooh!

[Final Authority]

I thought the quote was,"the more one pays for research the more research one gets." Very similar but to the point, research must have certain measurable goals or milestones or it becomes purely academic.

[unixfox]

This story reeks of this song...

How do ya like me now?
Now that I'm on my way, do you still think I'm crazy standin here today?

[SunkenCiv]

Sounds like an ideal material for, oh, I dunno, say, a space vehicle fleet owned by Richard Branson? ;')

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

Election 2004 threads on FR

[Bikers4Bush]

It's staggering what this could be used for.

[cyn]

space shuttle, pah -- use it in the next generation of FR flame suits!

[Protagoras]

It's staggering what this could be used for.

Yep, I hope it's true. But like so many other things, it could be mostly hype.

[Dead Corpse]

Might actually be able to survive more than a couple minutes on an evolution/drug war/libertarian thread.

[cyn]

If L'Oreal's ordinary shampoos cause a fish kill in Ohio (in which "A chemical reaction in a plant mixing vat ... caused the shampoo to burst through a pipe and onto the roof.", one wonders what this guy's concoctions could do to his neighborhood . . . and how long before he gets slapped with some environmental fine.

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.

[Bikers4Bush]

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.

[cyn]

oh yeah -- or DU, or face downs with moore & the dims . . . or Bush headquarters . . .

Great after action report, btw, Loopy -- might this help ya'll?

[Dead Corpse]

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.

[Centurion2000]

I think SS2 would benefit from this kind of paint. What are the temps experienced on spacecraft re-entry ?

[SunkenCiv]

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."

[SunkenCiv]

a Blast from the Past.

[nightdriver]

So, trot it out and let's have a look at it.

Words alone don't accomplish much.

[sourcery]

It seems that Maurice Ward's greatest strength as a researcher was that he had not been taught how to think.

So, both the man and his invention are 'degree resistant.' How appropriate.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

It's gone, Jim:

Vanishing Starlite

[SunkenCiv]

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...

;')

[js1138]

There really isn't any amount of money that could compensate for the licensing of a product like this, or salve the conscience of an inventor who denied it to the world. Nor is there any reasonable amount of money that could compensate a corporation that owned the product and refused to make it.

On the other hand, my city is home to a guy who bilked major corporations like Cisco out of millions of dollars to develop high speed transmission over telephone lines. He bamboozled a number of industry giants with sleight of hand demos.