A material that could withstand extremely high temperatures and even explosions of nuclear bombs. The world could be very different today if the starlite formula had not been lost.
Starlite was a plastic alloy created by a former British hairdresser named Maurice Ward. He made experiments to try to produce plastic hoods for vehicles of the French brand Citröen, but was unsuccessful. Until 1985, an air crash encouraged Ward to try to develop new material.
At the time, a plane caught fire on takeoff in Manchester, England. The accident killed dozens of people, prompting Ward to think of a material that was totally resistant to flames, which would have prevented the deaths in that accident.
Ward tested various types of mixtures and formulas with the remains of his experiments for Citröen and came up with a material he called starlite. This new material was resistant to a temperature of 2500 degrees Celsius, not only remaining intact, but remaining cool to the touch even after being exposed to the flame of a torch.
In 1990 the starlite came to be tested on British TV, when an egg was coated by the material and placed again under the flame of a torch. The egg remained raw and intact, as well as its shell.
At the same time, the UK Department of Atomic Weapons tested starlite, subjecting it to nuclear radiation that generated temperatures near 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, the material remained intact.
In 1991, the United States and the United Kingdom conducted nuclear bomb tests with Starlite, which withstood a force equivalent to 75 of the bombs that hit Hiroshima in World War II.
The loss of the formula
Size of resistance has made companies and government organizations have a lot of interest in the starlite formula. Among those interested were NASA and aircraft manufacturers British Aerospace and Boeing.
However, Ward has never closed deals on starlite rights. It is said that the inventor's requirements were very strict, including maintaining 51% ownership of the material, as well as an agreement barring the buyer from seeking to discover the formula or to analyze the invention.
Ward died in 2011 and took with him the starlite formula. He claimed that a person in his family was the only other person besides him who knew the formula, but that person's identity has not yet been revealed.