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Space Science

Could 'Fire Paste' Replace Shuttle Tiles? 122

Posted by timothy from the from-the-makers-of-bear-suit dept.
pipingguy writes "Troy Hurtubise, of bear suit fame, claims to have invented a physics-defying substance called fire paste. "I could coat the belly of the NASA space shuttle with fire paste for $25,000 (US), instead of the $60 million it costs for them to put tiles on it," Hurtubise said. "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off.""
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Could 'Fire Paste' Replace Shuttle Tiles? More

Could 'Fire Paste' Replace Shuttle Tiles?

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  • No more accidents (Score:3)

    by Kiriwas ( 627289 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @09:35AM (#7219317) Homepage
    Normally Im one for progress at almost any cost, but after losing both lives and practically our space program with the loss of Columbia, I'd want to see this new past tested thoroughly OUTSIDE of a lab, meaning in actual field tests. Put up a few rockets and let'em re-enter with the paste. At 60 mil for the tiles, it's worth it to invest in this tech by testing properly. fp?

    • Re:No more accidents (Score:3, Insightful)

      by eMartin ( 210973 )
      Somehow I don't think they would go and replace a major part of the shuttle's design and just expect it to work.
      • I beleive him. Did you see the Bear Suit? That guy even looks like Buzz Lightyear! I bet a guy who goes around looking like Buzz Lightyear knows a heckuvalot more about "flying through space" and things like that. More than some guys who make tile.


        • > I beleive him. Did you see the Bear Suit? That guy even looks like Buzz Lightyear! I bet a guy who goes around looking like Buzz Lightyear knows a heckuvalot more about "flying through space" and things like that. More than some guys who make tile.

          The question is whether he knows he's just a toy and his gadgets don't really work.

      • Somehow I don't think they would go and replace a major part of the shuttle's design and just expect it to work.

        Why not? "Uhhh......fuck it...that'll work" been NASA management's SOP for the past 20 years.
    • If they are saying they can just wash this paste off afterwards, I wonder what keeps it on during the flight. We've seen how well the polysterene isulating foam sticks to the fuel tank during takeoff, what happens if the paste falls off as well? What happens if the shuttle gets wet while it is sitting on the launch pad?
      I'd have more confidence if they said it couldn't be washed off no matter what happened.

      Also since it prevents the transfer of heat from one side of a sheet to the other surely it has huge p
      • 1: Water
        2: Washing detergent ----- This is probably the podwered 40lbs no-name brand detergent. I'nm guessing it's it.
        3: Cheap Flour (cooking, like bread) ----- I'm guessing the heat would break the starches
        4: Unwashed Salt ---- Probably not it, but salt's cheap
      • If its so common why hasn't anyone made it before, even by accident?

        "Chance favors the prepared mind."

        - Louis Pasteur

  • Interesting... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems to me that the best part of this would be that it might be able to be applied *in space* should something happen during launch!
  • how easily does it wash off?

    Sure, they don't have to worry about water vapor duing re-entry but what about other applications?

    Fire suits, anyone?
  • I'm dubious --- the guy seems to fit several of the classic nutter profiles --- but it would be very cool if he was right (pun not intended). To his credit, he does say that he doesn't know why it works, and he's willing for other people to arrange to test it.

    Of course, it probably still wouldn't be suitable as a reentry heat-shield material without further development --- it may be able to cope with the heat, but is it mechanically tough enough to cope with mach 25 winds? You don't want to get half-way t

    • but is it mechanically tough enough to cope with mach 25 winds? You don't want to get half-way through reentry and discover your heat shield blowing off in the breeze.
      Man, that would certainly give a completely new meaning to the phrase "Gone with the Wind"!
    • from the Slashdot archives
      December 1903

      Can you imagine these nutter bicycle mechanics
      claiming they flew! Langley has spent almost a million dollars on flight unsuccessfully. I think Orvile and Wilbur Wrong are cranks we can safely ignore.

  • Missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Oddly_Drac ( 625066 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @09:49AM (#7219507)
    "I could coat the belly of the NASA space shuttle with fire paste for $25,000 (US), instead of the $60 million it costs for them to put tiles on it," Hurtubise said. "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off.""

    First of all, it's not simply a matter of applying a 'big blowtorch' to the underside of the shuttle. There's a lot of laminar flow that accompanies the heat and for something that can be 'washed' off, I'd be interested in both viscosity and lateral movement.

    The other aspect is that plasma entered the interior of the port wing; it's not about the heat shielding failing so much as it was about having a bloody great hole in the leading edge. I'd be surprised if the paste could bridge that.

    • First of all, it's not simply a matter of applying a 'big blowtorch' to the underside of the shuttle.

      Too right, for one thing the reentry temperatures can be as high as 10000F (about 5500C [google.com]) That's much, much hotter than a blowtorch can provide (that's nearer to 1500C).

      There's a lot of laminar flow that accompanies the heat and for something that can be 'washed' off, I'd be interested in both viscosity and lateral movement.

      I'd be very concerned about it flat out melting and sloughing off. Basically al

    • Not all of the shuttle is coated with tiles. Some of the low-temp. areas (side fuselage, tops of wings, cargo bay doors) have insulating "blankets" that may be similar to this material. Generally, the low temp. areas are white on the shuttle, high temp. areas using the "black tiles" (nose, underbelly) with the reinforced carbon-carbon in the highest temp. areas (nosecap, leading edges of wings).

      As for this stuff, it may be well-suited for tile repair or use as a tile substitute or augmentation in some ar

      • "As for this stuff, it may be well-suited for tile repair or use as a tile substitute or augmentation in some areas. Clearly, more testing is needed."

        The best application for it would be emergency repair, but given the materials this guy can buy for '$25' a barrel, I doubt they'd be easy or even possible to apply in zero-G. I've got this guy pegged in the same bracket as those selling NBC suits after 9-11.

        I'm sure I've seen something like this before somewhere, though...

        • Yep, I remember seeing it too. It was this old guy, and he spread the paste on an egg, pointed a blowtorch at the egg for a few seconds, then cracked the egg, showing it was still completely raw.

          They had a tile made out of the stuff. It was able to withstand a high energy laser that burned through a steel plate.

          Whatever this junk is, it appears to work, but this current guy didn't necessarily invent it out of thin air; that other guy had made a paste like it earlier.

          From the show I saw, I remember that t
          • I remember seeing something like this before also. (Probably 8 or 9 years ago) One of the things they did with it that I remember; they lathered the white paste on one side of a paper towel, then held that side up to a blowtorch with the paper towel held so you could see the back side of it.

            IIRC on that show the inventor was also making claims about using it for re-entry material.
          • The plastic was called Star[something] - and the inventor was a Brittish man who came up with the idea after seeing a news report on an airline cabin fire that killed a large number of people.

            If I am recalling this correctly, the stuff was made from recyled plastics, which he 'blended' in a blender in his kitchen.

            • It was called Starlite. Our boys over at Cornell [cornell.edu] had a discussion [cornell.edu] on this back in '96. There's a pretty good debunking [cornell.edu] in response to the original question. Turns out that this is a very easy experiment to do, given controlled situations... I'm surprised The Discovery Channel couldn't find this.
              • alumina and kaolin makes porcelin
                could put urinals all over the outside of the shuttle
                the other stuff was called Kao Wool, that's the batting like you would use in the attic. It would have an astronomical R value, ha ha.
                You could put your finger through the kaolin refractory paste even after heating to 1500 or 1800 F
          • They had a tile made out of the stuff. It was able to withstand a high energy laser that burned through a steel plate.

            So what? I was watching this really cool show last night on this car polish, and they fired this really cool looking green laser at a car with this polish on it, and it DIDN'T EVEN BURN THE PAINT! REALLY! The polish protected the car! FROM FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS! And then I picked up the phone and ordered some for not $100, not $50, not even $29.99. I got it for the low low price of
            • the so called laser is purely an LED light,really cool about ambient! it would not even warm your hand on a hot summers day. so why don't you polish your frikin car with this polish and then put a match on it [ about 800oc. for a few seconds? see what happens. I bet them nasa people are glad that you don't work for them. If you want to get into the realms of a proper laser, Co2 or Nag, which can deliver say 200 w per cm per second. Or if you are really into it, something approaching 4,000 w per cm per secon
          • He applied a coating to an egg,and because of the time allowed, live time for the programme, was not a thermoset ploymer! followed by applying a blow torch producing 1500oc for a period of Five minutes. Although the surface of the coating looked to be redhot'when the torch was removed the old guy, if indeed he was was the programme producer, was able to pick the egg up with bare hands. The surface being no greater than ambient temperature.He cracked the egg open and poured out the contents "which had not ev
        • I think Fibrefax was made by Corning as a refractory that could be spread with a spatula. It was make with kaolin fibre. You could spread it an inch think inside a barrel and put a burner inside bringing it up to around 1500 F and the paint wouldn't burn on the outside of the barrel. We were doing raku and didn't need it higher. It isn't as good as batting though, and since it is kaolin, it melts at about 3000 (a faint memory.)
      • Yeah, we wouldn't want the shuttle flying through a cloud now would we?

        Maybe he should add some PTFE for waterproofing.

        Oh wait, that's flammable.

    • actually, there wasn't a hole in the structure of the wing, the foam strike at liftoff caused a slight misalignment in the carbon/carbon caps on the port wings leading edge. this allowed plasma to seep past, melting the aluminum wing leading edge structure beneath, thus breaching it. this in turn led to plasma invasion into the wing itself, resulting in severance of sensor wiring, and control surface hydraulic lines. this resulted in increasing oscilattions of the craft, which caused a angle of attack overl

  • It's not as if (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jammer@CMH ( 117977 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @09:52AM (#7219550)
    ceramic tiles are made of expensive raw materials, either. The process of manufacturing and installation is expensive, however. How much would his tiles save?

    (I know he calls it a paste. but if you look at the pictures the material he tests is has been cured into tiles.)

    • It sounds like you may be able to spray it on and cure it in situ. I couldn't swear to it but I'm guessing you could just spray the shuttle, wait for it to "set up" and then flame throwerize the whole thing
    • It's not as if ceramic tiles are made of expensive raw materials, either.

      That's not really the point though. It takes, on average, about a person-week to replace just one ceramic tile on the shuttle- they're that fiddly to install. In some cases you have to remove tiles from an entire section just to be able to replace one tile correctly.

      Still, his replacement material doesn't sound very practical either; for different reasons however.

    • What's the density of the cured material? If you are flying this on a spacecraft, it doesn't matter how high a temperature it will stand; if it's too heavy to let the machine get to orbit you can't use it.
      • It is possible that exposed to radiation, heat, cool, and/or vacuum could kill it. This will have to undergo some major testing but what has not in the space industry. It would be great if it works, though. This would be very useful for a landing on mars or even venus.
    • It's not as if ceramic tiles are made of expensive raw materials, either.

      No, I don't think that they're made out of expensive material, but the real cost of the tiles comes from the fact that each and every single one is custom-fitted.

      No two tiles on the space shuttle are the same - they're all perfectly formed to fit at one (and only one) location on the shuttle's belly. Each one had an indivicual serial number and design.

      That said, I do have some recollection of reading once that a missing tile could
  • Use it on the shuttle? Yeah, great...

    But this stuff seems to have a few more uses. In fact, if it's real, I'd think it would really be one of those few world-changing inventions. A few astronauts died in the shuttle, but think of how may people in the world die or suffer from fire or heat related injuries.

    And it's cheap!

    This stuff will be used in household items, cars, planes, computers, clothing, Hollywood, the military, and probably a lot more.

    Could it really be? If so, this would probably be bigger t
  • "The fire insurance industry is also interested, Hurtubise said, and has asked him to demonstrate."

    If I could coat my house with this stuff, and be sure that it would never go down in flames, why would I still need fire insurance?

    So, they're interested? I'll bet.
    • If I could coat my house with this stuff, and be sure that it would never go down in flames, why would I still need fire insurance?

      Your house may never burn down, but your furnature, books, clothes, curtains, electricals etc do burn and then there is smoke damage, water damage from the guys putting it out (and washing off the fire paste;-) house fires are still no fun!

    • They actually love prevention. While the number of claims are going down but the payments are still at the old rate, they make a hell of a lot of money.

      The break they give you for installing it is never quite as much as the actual reduction in their cost. :)

      And of course you still need fire insurance for everything that does burn. Trees, cars, rugs, kitchens, beds... especially beds, for smokers.

    • would cause fire proof exterior to melt into a puddle

      the insurance industry has no interest in the stuff

      i know that for certain
  • I can go down to my local Sports Authority, walk to the camping section, and buy a product called Fire Paste. It's actual the opposite of this. It's like consumer grade napalm. My friends and I used it for fireworks and such. Odd how this fire paste won't heat up. Why not call it cool paste, or something similar?

  • Sounds like starlight (Score:2, Informative)

    by mlush ( 620447 )

    10+ years ago I recall hearing about a guy who created a very similar sounding stuff I think he called it 'Starlight'. I recall a demo where he had an starlight coated egg resisting a blowtorch I think he was a hairdresser and had made it out of common hairdressing equipment/chemicals

    I recall he refused to patent it (cos big buisness would steal it) and apparently refused some very lucrative deals.

    Hmm google is my friend I have some references they guy was called Maurice Ward it was called starlig

  • A few years ago, I saw a TV report about a British inventor who had discovered something very similar by mixing a cocktail of chemicals together. There were several big chemical companies trying to buy it from him, but because they were only offering him a fraction of what it was worth, he was keeping it to himself. He reckoned the rate at which it radiated heat grew exponentially with temperature, so it never got hot.
    • "they were only offering him a fraction of what it was worth"

      Um how do you know how much it was worth? The market determines value. The only thing that this says is that it was worth more to him than it was to them.
      • Yeah, tell that to Siegel and Schuster. Their work was only worth the going rate, right?

        Just because it only gets so much up front doesn't mean it isn't actually worth far, far more to the person who exploits it.

  • I am sure that he is a brave man, and dedicated and hard working. Anyone prepared to go man versus ursus would have to be. I am sure he is ready to withstand pain and discomfort too.

    But, no offense, the guy sounds like home-workshop tinkerer, not a scientist -- and maybe a bit of a self-promoter too. So his suggestion that his paste could replace all the tiles on the space shuttle? Well, I wouldn't take his claim seriously if he didn't demonstrate he understood the specifications for space shuttle tiles

  • I think many people are mis-parsing this phrase, not that the construction of the sentance doesn't encourage it.

    I believe the subject of the phrase is the shuttle, not the paste.

    So, to edit:

    "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off."
    becomes :
    "The cured paste can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. After landing, they can simply wash the shuttle off."
    • That
      "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off."

      is derived from

      "I can smear it on my face like this, it can stand up to the heat of this blowtorch, like this, and then I can simply wash it off. Wow. I'm sold! Call now and quote this number..."
    • Yes because we all know a dirty shuttle is a bad shuttle. Why would it matter if they could just wash off the shuttle? Anyway he really means they can wash the fire paste off, read this paragraph which comes after the sentence in question.

      He's going to build two small-scale houses, coat one with fire paste and leave the other as is. Then they're both going to be set on fire. When the fire paste is sprayed off, Hurtubise said, the house will be there intact.

      It's obvious, it says it right there "When

  • I assume this fire paste is really just a ceramic after it's been cured.

    Then, the issues are the same as with the tiles: can it withstand

    • incredible heat
    • hypersonic wind loading
    • vibrations during take-off
    These are not easy requirements to satisfy simultaneously.

    IIRC, the tiles have to be inspected and some of them replaced after every flight.

    • right on! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @11:10AM (#7220557) Journal
      You're on the right track. The $60 million doesn't get you just shuttle heat tiles, it also gets you a warehouse full of paper documenting every single test and the certificates-of-compliance of every chemical/assembly used. Even bolts have lot numbers and are totally tracable.

      I suspect they do other testing, including:

      Water resistance. Not only so it doesn't wash off on rainy days, but doesn't absorb water so that freezing causes it to crack.

      Free oxygen erosion. Low earth orbit exposes the leading edge of spacecraft to free oxygen (O, not the stable O2), which tends to 'rust' things quickly.

      Thermal coefficient of expansion matching to the aluminium body, so it doesn't flake off. If it isn't matched, then you need a good adhesive system.

      Impact resistance. Does it chip or flake? You don't want a catastrophic failure mode (a super high-speed micrometeroite should make a hole instead of shatter the whole thing)

      Weight. They stopped painting the booster tank and saved a lot of weight. Current shuttle tiles are foam-like in weight.

      Repairability. Do you need to resurface the whole shuttle for the slightest chip, or is it fixable?

      Lastly, NASA wants a proven scientific theory of operation... something better than "It dissipates heat at an exponential rate, it's beyond belief, and I have no idea why it does, all I know is that it does." All things dissipate heat at an exponential rate - heat flow is usually related to a difference in temperatures, so as an object reaches the temperature of its surroundings, the heat flow slows down to aproach zero. That's pretty basic to understanding heat flow, and not novel.

      • All things dissipate heat at an exponential rate - heat flow is usually related to a difference in temperatures, so as an object reaches the temperature of its surroundings, the heat flow slows down to aproach zero.

        Careful. This substance is claimed to have virtually no heat conductance, so it dissipates heat either by convection or by radiation (which will dominate at hight T). Luminosity (dE/dt) goes as T^4 and T is proportional to the thermal energy (E=c1*T). A little calculus shows that the temperat

        • Thanks. I was using only conductance because that's the proported use of this material - as an insulator. (Also, I'm a bit rusty on the formulas of convection and radiation!).

          Also, for the radiation measurement, I'd think you'd be facing the earth on reentry, and thus use its temperature instead of 2.7K. In low earth orbit, there are big variations in the temperature seen (deep space/earth/sun), but since about half of your view is always earth, a proper thermal system will keep the average temperature in

          • Re:right on! (Score:3, Informative)

            by barakn ( 641218 )
            Actually, I made enough simplifications that there could be something exponential lurking in a more detailed analysis. My model works for either a good conductor that remains isothermal as it cools, or for a perfectly bad conductor being heated from the outside (it radiates all the energy away from its surface without any of it working its way inside). Also implied was a near vacuum and heat sinks cold enough compared to the temperature of the object that they are essentially zero. As such, it works best
    • in order to have a bona fide ceramic, it has to be vitreous.
      mineral components melt and crystalize. if the crystals are long enough, they are very durable because they interlock like crazy.

      come to think of it, apetite which is tooth stuff doesn't get fired. ha ha
      boy woult that hurt
  • Hey, could this stuff be used to isolate some compartments inside of a PC? Let's say I put some sheetmetal to isolate sections of the PC: motherboard, HD, powersuply.. etc. Now if I coated the sheetmetal with this stuff then can I be assured that each compartment will have an ISOLATED heating problem? If this is true it can help reduce the total number of fans needed in some PCs that have lots of components. For example, if I have a server with lots of drives (that I know are going to get hot) then I can is
  • Here's a selling point:

    "It dissipates heat at an exponential rate, it's beyond belief, and I have no idea why it does, all I know is that it does."

    I'm sure NASA is jumping at the chance....

    I'm not saying it's not worth the look. Someone needs to debunk it.
    • Well, I'm assuming for now he's done of a lot of experimentation and it's a legitimate invention. Countless inventions were stumbled upon by mistake. I'm sure the Wright brothers said something similar at one point or another.
      • > I'm sure the Wright brothers said something similar at one point or another.

        You might want to recheck your history. The Wright brother's first airplane was conceived based on careful study of how birds and gliders flew. They may not have been able to give you an explanation based on proper fluid dynamics, but they could probably have explained quite well that having the top of the wing sloped causes the air on top to travel at a different speed than the air beneath, thus producing lift.
        • Recheck my history, how clever. Don't you have anything better to contribute?

          By careful study, I assume you're referring to the Wright brothers testing a large number of wing segments in a wind tunnel and measuring the amount of lift from them, thus providing them with at the very least an intuitive sense of what worked best.

          How is this different from testing thousands of mix ratios in Hurtubise's fire paste? The point is it was empirical observation to see what works best, rather than simply hopping off


    • > > "It dissipates heat at an exponential rate, it's beyond belief, and I have no idea why it does, all I know is that it does."

      > I'm sure NASA is jumping at the chance....

      My computer dissipates heat at an exponential rate; maybe NASA should just coat the shuttle with a skin of Athlon chips.

  • From the article:

    He adds that fire paste can handle such high temperatures, that had the steel skeleton holding up the World Trade Towers been sprayed with it, the buildings wouldn't have imploded after being hit by two airliners Sept. 11

    The WTT skeleton had insulation that could withstand high temperatures, but it didn't withstand the mechanical stripping caused by tons of metal careening into the building at hundreds of miles per hour. His 'paste' would fare no better.

    "It dissipates heat at an exponen

    • According to the men who designed and built the WTC, they simulated (on paper) a plane hit.

      What they didn't plan for was the fire. The wtc was a very 'fine-boned' structure, having a lattice of thin steel girders around the outside walls instead of the traditional huge pillars - so they could sell large chunks of floor space at a time. They just didn't think about the fact that the plane might be filled with gas.

      In short, bzzzzzzzt!
      • Actually, they simulated a plane hit for the biggest planes of the time, which were smaller than the ones that hit the WTC. They probably estimated less fuel, too. The girders were insulated; the design called for asbestos, which was used most of the way up. Midway through construction the use of asbestos was outlawed, and a less effective insulation was used for the top half/third of the towers. It's likely that the towers would have stood much longer if asbestos had been used all the way up, though the s
        • It had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the insulation or its bond to the metal frame. No insulation available on this planet would have survived the scrubbing action of tons of high velocity metallic debris, and any large fire afterwards would melt the exposed frame.
    • The WTT skeleton insulation was not complete. It was designed to have asbestos insulation. Partway through construction asbestos was outlawed in new construction and they stopped installing it. Only the first 40 floors of one of the towers had it.

      The design called for insulation, but they never installed a replacement for the asbestos for the rest of the structure.
      • uh, wrong.

        • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_Trade_Cen t er

          The role of asbestos in the contruction of the towers and collapse has been discussed by [1]. Basically, asbestos was used as a fire-retardant agent and insulation in the first 60 floors, but not for the entire building. This is thought to have contributed to the collapse because the structural material was not as impervious to heat without the asbestos coating. Cleanup of the wreckage has been hindered by asbestos content as well.

          and

          http://cs

    • "It dissipates heat at an exponential rate, it's beyond belief, and I have no idea why it does, all I know is that it does." He probably doesn't know what hes talking about. "Disspates heat" probably means "The other side from the fire doesnt get hot" and "exponentially" probably means "really good". What it probably really is is a substance with low conductivity that retains its integrity at high temps. Or something. Frankly, there's lots of those around. Like for example, bricks which also start out lif

  • Some perspective (Score:3)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @10:43AM (#7220175) Homepage
    You've really got to watch Project Grizzly to get a feel for this guy. He's a hard working, confident kind of guy. He's also a bit of a nutbar, and not always practical.

    For example, he tested his bear-proof suits with swinging logs, baseball bats, and firearms - but failed to ensure he could walk in the suit before going out for a live test with bears.

    He very well could have a great thing here, but I think we need to rely on someone else to come up with reasonable feasibility tests.
  • "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off."

    But for the fact that atmospheric reentry isn't a handheld blowtorch, but friction. i.e. it does a pretty good job of "washing off" most things that hit it, to the point of disintegrating them.

    Might be good under the tiles mind you. I do carry a healthy skepticism of inventors who crow to the media in his particular fashion, but assuming it stands up to rigorous testing, great.
  • What is the mass of this paste per unit area protected, relative to the mass of the shuttle tiles? After all, if this stuff is ten times heavier it really doens't matter how much cheaper it is.

    What is the strength of this material? If it is ten times more prone to shattering than shuttle tile it is no good.

    Furthurmore, I could hold a big block of steel in my hand, and blowtorch it for a few seconds, and it will be cool. Now, put that same steel in a furnace for several minutes.

    The single best demonstrati
    • This is especially pertinent since I've seen video of shuttle tiles being pulled out of a blast furnace and being cool enough to handle while still glowing on the inside from the heat.
  • I'm sad the modded-up comments so far have been "no you can't put it on the shuttle." I'm intrigued by this guy's invention and apparently the demonstration conducted by the Discovery Channel group was impressed. I'm sure if I get to see it on TV I'll be impressed to. He's not using dirty tricks or sneaky wording. He's saying "this stuff resists heat transfer amazingly well" and points out some big possibilities for it. He doesn't know why it works, it just does. And the best comments so far are "it's not p
  • Ship: Sir, we will be entering the atmosphere soon.

    Enemy: Ready those water baloons!
    Enemy2: Yes sir! (Boing)
    Enemy2: Oh no, the giant rubber band broke!
    Enemy: Looks like they got lucky today.
  • Does this really break the rules of physics? If it does, which ones? Why would something *have* to absorb energy?
    • Something that doesn't absorb any energy would be a perfect insulator. I don't know of any of those, aside from a vacuum. You can decide for yourself whether a vacuum exists or is the absence of existance.

      I'm not qualified to say whether a perfect insulator is physically possible or not. In light of superconductors, which are perfect conductors, it seems reasonable to think that some sort of perfectly insulating superinsulator might be possible. (Yes, electrical and thermal conductance are different, but
  • This was posted by an AC down at 0, so here it is for others to see...

    "Go to http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=10/6/2 003 and check out the fire-paste segment."

    Check out the video, very cool stuff. "I don't know why it works, I don't know how it works, but it works."

    Interestingly enough, he developed this stuff to help heat-proof his "bear suit".

  • Most substances that aren't solid, and many that are, outgas like crazy in the mostly-vacuum environment of space. If this "fire paste" does, then what's left when it comes time for re-entry may not work as well as it should, or even work at all.
  • don't a lot of house fires start from the *inside*? I wonder if there's any resale value on an empty shell of "fire paste"...
  • Slap a coat or two on. Let it go for a while. Add a few more coats. Does it promis not to harm clear coats?

  • I see a joint project... (Score:3, Funny)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @05:56PM (#7224649) Homepage Journal
    I'd like to see a bear suit coated with fire paste.

    This would solve the problem of those nasty flaming bears that attack me all too often.

    This would be great around the office.

  • If I lived in an area prone to forest fires, I'd sure love to be able to spray a coat of this stuff on the roof whenever a fire raged in the area. Many of the house fires that result from forest fires start when embers are blown onto rooves, and it sounds like "fire paste" could be a good and cheap defense. And rain might wash it away when it's no longer needed.
  • I can't believe how serious you are all taking this. Believe me, it doesn't work. I saw Project Grizzly. I saw the bearsuits. This guy is the most bumbling, goofiest engineer I've ever had the sheer pleasure of mocking. And if it does work, then he's the LUCKIEST most bumbling, goofiest engineer that I've ever had the sheer pleasure of mocking. And, oh yes, I will still mock. Thank God for Troy Hurtubise.
  • to see what hes got...

    If you watch the video its not a "spray paint" like substance, its a paste with I imagine unlimited thickness whereas the outter shell of it does most of the work.

    Thermal transfer and heat dissapation doesnt even apply here, rather it outright Reflects heat.

    Different then a ceramic tile because those actually absorb heat.

    Interesting to to hear him say he researched what MIT and Harvard were up to in materials development of the such and took that knowledge and made a homemade brew
    • Also you have to consider the fact that this material given it doesnt accept heat(pressure in context), in a high velocity environment that would mean it would probably compress the material. Who knows how that will affect it. Ceramic tiles dont really physically compress because they accept the heat energy/pressure.

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