![]() ![]() Not only was the eggshell unburnt, but the yolk inside was still raw even after a constant exposure of five minutes. Then an oxyacetylene blowtorch at 1200 degrees Celsius was put on the egg. In March of 1990, the show demonstrated Starlite in action. News of the Starlite material reached the producers of the BBC programme, Tomorrow’s World. As strong as it was, being able to resist a nuclear flash and at least three times the melting point of diamonds, it was said to be flexible and able to be molded into various forms. Additionally, its strength and durability supposedly intensified when tested. In this form, Starlite could easily withstand temperatures beyond the wildest of imaginations without giving off any toxic fumes or smoke. The mysterious substance was based on a combination of 21 polymers and copolymers with some added ceramics. While Ward refused to answer any questions as to how he designed Starlite, he did reveal certain secrets about it. He threw himself into his work – almost consumed by it – and eventually discovered a formula for Starlite. Maurice was so shocked by this tragedy that he set out to see if he could create a substance that could withstand intense heat without emitting toxic smoke or gasses. Ward binned it and forgot all about it until he saw a news report in 1985 about the British Airtours plane that suffered an engine fire costing the lives of 55 passengers. But he ended up with a failed extruder material that was little more than scrap. The more Ward tried out his new toy, the more he lost his passion for hairdressing. Almost immediately he began to dabble with it. This cumbersome machine was a system that would develop plastic cross-sections and took up a lot of space within his factory. The adroit businessman bought an extruder from Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). One thing led to another when Ward branched out into a plastics recycling business. It was really downstream from that as to how I came about making up the compositions and the formulations in the actual materials which we’ve used in Starlite.” Need For a New Thermal Barrier I had about 20 years hairdressing, and it took me about three years to learn how to do coloring. We used to do coloring in the early days. I think it was my experience in hairdressing that really brought it together. “I think I probably asked around a little bit, and I may have done a bit of reading, but I had to find my way around the type of materials that we needed to use, which wasn’t easy. The talk show host Steven Rinehart interviewed Maurice Ward around 2009, and this is what Ward had to say about how his background led to Starlite: The hairdresser had never attended university, nor did he have any formal training in chemistry. With his wife, Eileen, and four daughters, he ran a salon that was immensely popular, and customers would flock from across the north of England. He had spent many years learning to design and mix his own hair dyes, and the confident Ward would brag that his heads could never be copied. From Hairdressing to StarliteĪs a hairdresser, Maurice had earned local renown. But, it wasn’t the heat or flames that killed them. In 1985, fifty-five people perished aboard a British Airtours plane within 40 seconds after the start of a fire during take off. He was a simple hairdresser from Hartlepool in Yorkshire, England, who wanted to make the world a better, safer place. Scientists have always been able to identify problems and find ingenious ways to overcome them. These materials have very different mechanical properties, are assembled with different fabrication techniques and have very different installed costs.Maurice Ward invented the mysterious heat resistant plastic, Starlite, in 1986. Heat shields have traditionally been fabricated from copper and aluminum, when the highest possible thermal conductivity is required, and to a lesser extent from stainless steel. Structural considerations, such as the need to support the cold stage of the system, as well as space limitations may also factor in to heat shield design. For actively cooled heat shields a high thermal conductivity as well as a low emissivity is desirable. Heat shields come in many forms they may be completely passive relying on a low emissivity for effective operation, or they may be actively cooled by helium vapor, an intermediate stage of a refrigerator or by liquid nitrogen. While always a consideration, recent fluctuations in the cost of helium have made the use of effective heat shields all the more critical to the cost effective operation of liquid helium systems. Heat shields reduce the operating cost of a system by intercepting radiated heat that would otherwise add to the load on the low-temperature stage of the system. ![]()
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