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: ru-vid.com/group/PL1a2HkcVbmAVm9q-OiOJ5DopnD72J3Qdf 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!

I remember when I was younger going through RU-vid 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 RU-vid to recommend, it was definitely worth it!

You legend! I remember playing with your last recipe in my garage and having it stand up to some mighty feats ;) now I've returned and you've only gone and made it a thousand times better! God bless!

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!!

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

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.

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

Fantastic Video. I've been interested in the product ever since I saw the eccentric inventor demonstrate it. Showing the paint possibilities was also very helpful. Living on ten acres of woods makes fire a great danger. Thanks. Great instruction. Now it's time to experiment and play and see what can be practically protected.

I watched this video after the waterproofing sheet video both impressive,VERY impressive! I'm going to watch a few more. You are a great orator and teacher. I will explore Brilliant and check back in. Thank you for "Sparking" my 68 yr. Young's brain🙏

when I saw the title: "ahh another video on Starlite, I've heard this story before" When I finished the video: "This was so much new information and so well put together. NightHawkInLight delivers again!"

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!

First time here. Your presentation skills are top notch. You know the material and don't cut very often. Refreshing, love it!

The act of people "taking something to the grave" that would benefit mankind because of greed and selfishness is an act of pure vanity and it takes the lowest sort of human filth to commit such an act . Thank you for sharing ! You are a good man Sir !

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.

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

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

so I started watching this and was thinking I would skim through it and get some details....then I forgot to skim and watched 21 minutes of really neat information! Keep up the great content!

One use I can see for this is as a homemade welder’s putty to protect from heat when working around items that need to be protected from excessive heat.

I love when I spend an hour descriptively googling something till I find the the proper term for it. upon googling that, suddenly there is a wealth of information.

You did a very good explanation, and outstanding demonstration of this fire resistant material!

I love how you do the homework on thoroughly researching the info in your vids.

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 RU-vid channels be like this? I can't even describe how tired I am of excessive upspeak in other videos.

I remember the original BBC story introducing starlite when it first aired in my country. I recall one of the claims made by Ward was that it was made with "household ingredients".

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"

Very good video buddy, I really enjoyed that and you do so well being a presenter too. Keep up the good work, very nice quality video streams!

I knew ship's biscuits were near indestructible, but this is a whole new level. Complete with Borax weavil protection, although I don't think the sailors would appreciate it.

Styropyro or the backyardscientist should unleash some laser mayhem on it.

Just awesome! Glad I ran into this channel! Thank you

This is an impressive video, unusually well put together and informative.

Like most of your videos, I found this really interesting and learned quite a bit. I love how such an effective material can be made from anything from very common to somewhat rare ingredients. Keep up the great work!

Just a theory, but maybe he didn’t want the recipe for starlite to get out because it was super easy and relatively cheap to make??

It gives me a great pleasure and knowledge watching your videos. Thank you for sharing. Keep up the great work !!

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.

Glad you took up this mystery. I remember when the creator first debuted the material on news programs decades ago. I started prototyping similar materials until I was duplicating Space Shuttle-style heat tiles instead. I wanted the whitest refractory ceramic I could design AND make it water proof so it could be used for roofing and wall tiles to just plain ignore sunlight and Texas heat. The final products where nearly imune to large fresnel lenses and barely even warmed but I never resolved the water corrosion issues. Any glaze involved raised the heat absorption back up again. Someday though...

14:49 Let's make a happy litte fire resistant layer here

I like your honest and educational style. Subscribed

Superb presentation. Excellent technical content. Definitely gripped my attention.

What's the reusability like on the borax-infused material - if it is cooled and exposed to flame again, is it still durable? Could it be used to line a small gas forge?

I work as a building inspector and have a lot of run-ins with intumescent caulking that is used to fill membrane penetrations in listed assemblies. Hadn’t really thought about there being a link between starlight and the caulking as far as how they function

Excellent presentation. Totally deserving of over a million subscribers! Congrats on soon reaching 2 mil. ;)

I saved this vid for my son who builds proto type industrial machines. I might use your way of starlite when building a yard bread furnace around my village house. I enjoyed this vid tremendously

If I remember correctly, Ward's intention was a result of an airline disaster...he sought out to create a non-flammable alternative to the internal plastic construction used in commercial planes...I have issues with him...as his claimed initiative was altruistic, but his subsequent behavior was for purely monetary gains. The little voice in the back of my head says that there was a severe flaw in his formulation...my guess is longevity or durability...and he was biding time to perfect it, to no avail, before his ultimate demise.

Omg this is why I love this channel

Incredibly interesting stuff. Awesome video!

I enjoyed listening to your video. Even though it was long, I did not get bored. I feel like some creators put so much filler in that I can't stand watching it... but you were well-spoken, did not rush, did not go too slow, used examples, had a story, and gave credit when credit was due. It was a joy. I'm going to subscribe!

2:11 improved version of my formula 6:26 history of Starlite 10:56 Starlite commercialization 13:51 similar products

My dad was a chemist and made something similar to this in the early 80's. His had one component of coal ash the rest i don't know. But you could hold it in your hand like this demonstration but didn't blacken but was very brittle.

I'd love to see you try making a small foundry out of that material and see how it holds up?

the fact that I was just some dude on the internet that rediscovered a super material is astounding

A very sharp mind , enjoy watching your projects , thank you .

Such a detailed breakdown. This video is awesome. Thank you

"It turns out this is an old technology that was rediscovered" Now if only someone could rediscover Roman concrete

It's stuff like this that makes me feel like being a teenager again would be amazing rather than awful. I know gen Z has inherited a lot of crap to deal with, but I would have killed to have access to this kind of information when I was young. I was so enthralled with the world and how cool every avenue of science is, but was stuck in a world of pen and paper, crappy teachers, no encouragement, and no people to realistically aspire to (Boyle and Newton don't count) As a 40-odd year old, watching this makes me want to study chemistry, physics, engineering and dig a basement to make into a lab. Please keep doing what you're doing

Thank you once again for the great video! 🙏🏻 Towards these heat and fire tiles and materials, I came across to another great solution, and it's called hempcrete. I would love to see you doing a video of it in the same content as this video. In my part, I felt in love with hempcrete and hemp fiber, they are now my materials of choice by far. Surely, I would not build a space rocket of these, but almost everything else could work with it I guess. Best regards and thanks 🙏🏻

I saw some vids years ago on StarLite, can't wait to see what you got going in this video!

The 'rare' ingredients may not have been overly exotic to someone who trained as a hairdresser in the 1940s and 50s in the UK.

Japanese builders have been using a technique called Yaki Sugi ( 焼杉, "Roasted Cedar") for centuries (it's usually called "Shou Sugi Ban" in the west, for some reason). It involves charring the outer surface of cedar cladding boards of wooden houses. It increases rot- insect- and fire-resistance...

One of the very few instances yt shows you a random channel and it’s a banger! Definitely want to try these in my forge

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.

Subbed to this channel for the mini potato cannon, left with a super material. Thanks bro.

my guess is that starlite was made with exactly the most basic ingredients he had in the kitchen, and he knew that everyone can replicate it - hence the secrecy.

Fantastic researched information and wonderfully presentation 👏

Fascinating history! Wish you all the best hawk! (and get your hands on rare materials) :p

I work with intumescent fire protection every day at work! We apply it to the inside of doors that go in railway cars.

19:32 - third improvement from glass bubbles: massive overall weight reduction... the ‘98 Ford Taurus reduced the weight of their epoxy undercoat from 70+ lbs to ~34 lbs by incorporating 3M glass bubbles into the compound before spraying. The bubbles will flow, so they didn’t clog the sprayer. Cool technology...

Great work with your channel, very interesting topics explain in a simple and intelligent way. Following you from Peru

very good work. May you spread more and more light of knowledge in the right way

I don't think you've ever published a single video where I didn't learn something new. You go into so much detail in everything you cover and always do so in a fascinating way. Thank you! I hope you and your family are staying safe during these difficult times.

um i think that guy he accidentally "discovered" (yes, not invented) starlite from burnt cookie made by his wife 😆

Fantastic and fascinating video! Thank you for making it, I learned a lot!

great video man, per usual genius, food for thought for personal home construction, genius content

I love the fact that you have covered this subject, I saw "starlight" first shown on Tomorrows world and always wondered what happened to it. I will certainly be experimenting with this as a heat insulating material at some point.

You've gone to great effort to thoroughly research the topic and then explain the ingredients and material properties in a logical and clear way. All backed up with demonstrations and tests. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I really enjoyed it.

Very interesting ring u have on. Great video. Thank you!

I love your video! Very smart. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

What's worse than keeping your secret products secret is, the product you thought of making years ago being made by someone else and you watch it being sold on TV and Amazon.

Your style is awesome. I enjoyed and learned a lot. Thanks

Watching your videos are far better than Netflix and far more informative.

I find the story of Starlite fascinating, mostly because of the inventor's self-destructive tendencies. He possibly could have made millions, but was continually foiled by himself.

Ablative coatings are still used for atmospheric reentry, even just today to bring the Demo-2 guys home. (Bob and Doug, the #SpaceDads)

This reminds me of "Snakes" sold at stores around fourth of July. Love your videos!

Great presentation that was informative and interesting. Love the bird also.

Usually when I hear these sponsers I skip or just leave when it's in the end. But your bird caught my eye while slightly listening

I like how you included the strange history of starlight's creator in this. What an odd character.

Thank you for your research and this video! I was researching ways to insulate my rocket stove and I believe this is the recipe I will be playing with.

Fantástico!!! Realmente muy buena lo guardaré para que no se pierda.

Okay now this is amazing. It’s like I’m watching you discover things on your own through experimentation that I’ve only read about in textbooks and journals. I’ve long wanted to try and make starlight.

I'm a special inspector that has seen intumescent paint and material on a ton of job sites. Very cool video bringing awareness to the concepts!

Increíble que compartas la ciencia con las personas de otros idiomas, gracias!

Fascinating vid, fantastic, humble, clear, no-nonsense explanation...truly brilliant bird moves ;-) (that charmer got me to stick through the entire commercial, well played!)..somewhere between the curiosity, the intelligence, the personality (seen and hinted at), the interesting conversational possibilities and, well, the looks...let's just say I wish I didn't also get the sense that you're a family man! ;-) Ahhhh, well thanks for the pleasant inspirations!

This man is the living embodiment of absolutely boredom and curiosity combined

i recently fell into your channel an i absolutely adore it, and 100% feel you are a great science communicator.

Dude, you had me at ‘waterproof bedsheets’,...I’m am now a dedicated subscriber to your amazing channel.

Great information and testing process!

Havent watched the whole thing yet, but i love the whole story behind Starlite. Love that this is making a reappearance.

Fantastic work! Thank you for this comprehensive follow-up.