History of a Lost Supermaterial & How To Make It (Starlite Part 2)

Check out the other videos in my Starlite series, including how to make a Starlite forge: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1a2HkcVbmAVm9q-OiOJ5Do… This is one project where you should definitely check out the source links posted in the video description! There's some really interesting stuff in there. Thanks to everyone who tested and experimented with my previous starlite (or "star-alike") recipe and shared their own videos. Thank you also to my Patreon supporters for backing projects like this one. I'm not finished with this yet, and I hope to work my homemade fireproofing material into several other projects.

It's so funny how so many of life's mysteries boil down to "I didn't know the term to search for"

I was Maurice's main point of contact in the 1996-1998 period with McDonnell Douglas as it was transitioning to Boeing. When I retired from Boeing in 2016, I wrote a paper on our Starlite testing during that period, because most of the primary players were already dead - Maurice himself, and Rudi Naranjo who had been Maurice's main NASA contact, and our own chief investigator for tests we ran using lasers and torches on a wide variety of Starlite samples in St Louis and at other sites. Whether they accepted that paper for the Boeing Technical Journal or not, I don't know. But I do know that Maurice himself didn't understand the theoretical basis for how Starlite worked. He was an experimenter, not a theoretician. Starlite wasn't a thing, it was a family of things, and he would never be able to just produce a jar of Starlite. He invariably asked for a detailed description of whatever application you wanted to put it to, then he would go into a lab and create something that he thought would work. Testing would show if he was on the right track, and he'd refine the formulation until he was satisfied with its performance in that particular form for that particular application. For anything else, the process would start all over. Starlite could be mixed with water to form a paste, or with epoxy, or various other things. He could blend it in with plastic materials (all that stuff about being a hairdresser was a red herring that he used to distract people from the fact that he'd spent years in the plastic recycling business) and polypropylene seemed to be his favorite there. He could incorporate it into foams. He could make it rigid or flexible. He could make it intumescent or not, and that alone used to create another useful red herring for researchers who might be trying to duplicate his material. During the course of our testing we found other materials that could reproduce some of Starlite's properties, but not all. They tended to be cementitious (you can get impressive thermal resistance out of ordinary Hardie board) and not amenable to combining with resins and plastics without severely compromising their mechanical properties. One in particular, though, involved a very different theoretical basis from the others, based on seemingly unrelated NASA research, and the test data that they showed matched our Starlite data for coated metal panels. That's the only form that it came in, though, a coating; it couldn't, as far as I know, have been molded into plastics or foams like Starlite was. Being able to handle Starlite in its many forms, and being on close personal terms with its inventor at the time, was one of the most memorable phases of my career. I wish something could have been done with Starlite, but Maurice knew that he was only going to get one chance to cash in on his invention because it wasn't protected by patent (he was holding it as a trade secret instead) and so as soon as it was used on actual products out in the real world, it was going to get reverse-engineered and reproduce in some form or another without earning him a cent in royalties. He left the basic formulation behind, with his wife and daughter, but he told me once that he hadn't told them quite everything; he said he'd "kept the good stuff" to himself. A very unusual man, to match his very unusual material!

"Its been a closely guarded secret for over 40 years, also, lets make it for a youtube video" 😂😂im so glad the internet exists

As a writer who dabbles in sci-fi, I love coming across science youtube channels. They always give me ideas because of everything I learn. Found you through recommended videos while watching NileRed, definitely gonna check out more of your stuff.

Borax melts into a glass like material, thats why the carbon material is much stronger.

9:05 I highly respect the little note saying "potential false dichotomy", not many people are courageous enough to point out potential flaws in their arguments like that. Keep up the great work!!

Yes. When i was in school, i had contact with NASA back then and held the plates they put on the space shuttles. The man who presented it to me, stated that it was extremely expensive, so only select people could even know about it. He demonstrated a torch on it then put his hand on it. I did it next. It had no temperature. It was very heavy. The space shuttles were covered in them. It would glow red while fire was on it and hold no heat at all. Nothing was burned at all.

Boral is a building material usually used for exterior trim. Waterproof, doesn't rot, and when I threw a puck of it into the firepit, it was still there after weeks of fires. "Boral TruExterior Trim is made from a combination of a bio-based polymer and fly-ash (which is a byproduct of coal combustion). Combining the ash with a polymer makes a sustainable product with some excellent characteristics"

I used this recipe as a makeshift high temperature soldering block for jewelry making. I was able to solder large pieces of silver plate without warping or bending. The carbon reflected the heat into the part nicely and protected the surface underneath. Thanks nighthawkinlight.

Don't be fooled, he says he made this material intentionally but really he just sucks at baking cookies

I’ve always wondered what happened to this, invention, and especially what happened to the quite quirky guy who invented it. I’ve actually tried to research it and this is the only video I’ve found that mentions it. He claimed it could be used in liquid form to make fabrics fire proof and that it would be used to make rockets heat proof. It’s cool to finally know what happened and wish it was actually the magic material he had hoped it would be. Love your channel thanks.

I remember when I was younger going through Youtube and seeing a clip of him showing off the egg experiment. I’m not one for experimenting myself, the most I’ve done is handling borax for slime for my siblings, it’s amazing how much people can do with just some home materials, bits of information, and determination. Even now just reading the comments seeing people talk about their own experiments with similar goals, or even experiments for other materials in general, it’s amazing how far one can go with things you can buy from stores. It’s inspiring, maybe one day when I’ve sorted out what I want to do with my life I could try it out myself. So in short thanks for sharing this, even if it took a few years for Youtube to recommend, it was definitely worth it!

If I wanted millions for some flour and borax, I'd be very secretive too.

I really appreciate the calm, no-nonsense tone in these videos. Plus the annotations. Informative without trying to be clever. Why can't all informative YouTube channels be like this? I can't even describe how tired I am of excessive upspeak in other videos.

My curiosity died a long time ago, however, not the basic usefulness of advantageous information even if I could not understand it. Thank you for your very educational video.

Another great example of scientific curiosity and experimental patience. Great work; thanks for sharing.

As an engineer on the former Space shuttle in specifically this area, I don't know if I speak for my friends, but I definitely found this Freaking amazing. I've been watching your channel for years, and this is one of the best videos you've ever made!

About 7 years ago when I was a freshman of Chemistry I went a little nuts going down the Maurice Ward rabbit hole. I think you are right in using readily available materials. I think the simplicity of the ingredients is in part for the ridiculous secrecy. In my mania i came up with a list of potential ingredients a hairdresser would have had access too, local to his area and his time. My most successful trial came after introducing a borosilicate powder to a similar base to yours. My most catastrophic failure came after i then tried adding sodium hydroxide as an analog for a perm solution. I was so caught up in the mystery that i neglected to actually work out the chemistry.

Great video. Great presentation. Great benefit to the viewer. 10/10.