Imagine

... you are sitting in an airplane that crashes on take off.  You slide off the end of the runway and gradually come to a stop with the fuselage intact. Just when you are saying an ecstatic "We made it!" one of the fuel tanks ruptures and the fuel ignites from a torn electrical connection. Your life flashes before your eyes and... you sit and watch as the fire trucks arrive, perfectly comfortable and completely safe from the inferno outside the window, waiting for the emergency crews to put the fire out. That's what Starlite, an amazing plastic, can do. Too bad it has been sitting around for 23 years while government agencies and big corporations wrangle over ownership rights.

The London Daily Telegraph has the full story, replete with an eccentric English inventor, a test showing the material can deflect the heat of a nuclear blast, and the above said agencies and corporations scheming to "license" the material and then reverse engineer it so they can then produce it themselves. It's an interesting story, one that makes one wonder how many more life-changing inventions have sunk into the same morass.

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html