Turns out that to make the legendary/mythical Starlite material, you just mix corn starch and baking soda in a 10:1 ratio and add regular white glue until it has a clay-like consistency, then shape and let dry to get a heat shield/fire resistant material that makes our fanciest Nomex gear look like crap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqR4_UoBIzY
The stuff isn't flexible once dry, but imagine a firesuit made of hard sections of this stuff with Nomex just in the joints. Seems like it would work a lot better, no? At least in terms of fire resistance. IF it doesn't breathe well or otherwise traps too much heat, it could make more sense to line the most fire-vulnerable areas of the cockpit with it, especially the firewall, footwell and seat.
UIn reply to GameboyRMH :
Awesome!
...aaand now I want to try it as a header wrap.
Did anyone else notice that the flames wrapped around the hand but he still has hair on his knuckles?
Im calling bullE36 M3.
I think what looks like the flames wrapping around is the flames flowing off the sides where you can see his fingers through them. If the flames were wrapping around his hands would be missing more than knuckle hairs...
Dave M
Reader
12/30/18 9:10 p.m.
The British government investigated the stuff long ago as it is a tremendous insulator. Unfortunately it also rapidly biodegraded, which is also probably why you don't want to use it in racing?
Thread resurrection: Recently I was thinking about this and wondering what could be done to make this stuff less biodegradeable. Well it turns out that the guy who rediscovered it had the same thoughts just a couple years later, and came up with a variant that uses Borax as a main ingredient. He also found that there are some similar products already commercially available including a paint that works on the same principle:
If the biodegradation can be fixed, this would have a lot of great uses in fire safety. One could be in EVs, although it's a bit late in the game for battery chemistries with fire issues. If the inside of battery modules in a li-ion or li-po pack were coated with this, then if a battery caught fire the remaining batteries in the module should burn off rapidly but harmlessly inside the pack, and the car could be back on the road after having the affected module replaced.
