Fireproof paint: Use it on the shuttle tank?

[Thomas Kirby]

It is not a rumor or an urban legend that someone invented a paint that is so resistant to heat that it can protect an egg from being cooked by a propane torch held to it for several minutes. It's not even physically that implausible. I can easily imagine that some mixture of chemicals can form a barrier that refuses heat. Something that contains a mixture of borates and silicates could form a sort of borosilicate glass when it cures. Pores could make it difficult for heat to penetrate, the glass-like substance could radiate heat away quickly and be a physical barrier that keeps the flame away from what it is protecting. If it is mixed with glass spheres to begin with, the glass can withstand at least a thousand degrees Fahrenheit easily.

 

The idea that came to me is that a paint like this can be applied to a wood frame house while it is under construction. It could make house fires as rare as lottery wins. A bottle of flaming liquid smashed against the outside would cause only superficial damage. There would be an end to fires started by soldering copper pipe. Electrical fires would become quite unlikely. Almost no common household problem would cause the actual frame of a house to sustain a fire, or even the wall board.

 

And now that I start Googling for information, I find out that just like the idea for LED growlights, someone already has the non-toxic heat-resistant paint on the market. I'm surprised that it isn't on those morning infomercials. It seems like some kind of really important thing is missing from our perceptions.

 

http://www.firefree.com/firefree88.htm

 

I had wanted to invent the stuff, but it's already out there. This isn't an advertisement. It's something I have an interest in. I've become a little more worried about fire safety after the number of burned outlets I have changed in just one house where someone put paint in the outlets. They didn't start a fire, but two of the outlets that I removed had burned so badly that the plastic utility boxes they were mounted in had burned and melted. We were lucky here but I like the idea that even when someone does something stupid, like paint while using drugs and alcohol, they don't burn down the house or set it up to burn down later.

 

This idea was so obvious when I first read about Maurice Ward's "Starlite" paint. He's the one who demonstrated on BBC that his paint would protect an egg from cooking by a blowtorch. I'm still wondering why it doesn't receive a lot of fanfare and publicity. Even painting the inside of a room with it will make to so that if the furnishings catch fire, it would take much longer for a fire to spread to the rest of the house. Best is to coat the frame as the house is being built. Depending on how ambitious you are, a lot of old houses could probably use new wallboard anyway, so it is worth considering the idea of stripping the wallboards, painting the framework with fire resistant paint, and taking that opportunity to insulate at the same time. Painting the outside would protect the house from brushfires. If the paint protects for at least two hours at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, that would stop a Molotov Cocktail. A grease fire in the kitchen would burn itself out before it set the walls on fire.

 

I have to wonder also if the same coating can prevent the damages caused by water infiltration, like the kind caused by horizontal rain during hurricanes. They don't mention waterproofing, but it would almost seem that the paint would be waterproof by default and able to prevent water damage to the wood and wallboard, and to prevent fungal growth.

 

I will propose another application: Check into the feasibility of using a paint like this on the shuttle tank instead of the insulating foam. It may have to be modified, like stuffed with hollow glass spheres, but it just might work. If not, well, at least it's an idea.

[Kermit]

This is exactly like the "Why not make the whole plane out of the black box material?" problem.

 

They probably have considered it but somehow can't.

[Thomas Kirby]

Not really, Kermit. This is a new material that has useful properties that is easy to apply but isn't familiar to so many people. It's so much like paint you get at the hardware store or Walmart that it's even a water-based latex that you can clean off your brushes with water. And it's no surprise that it can be that way. Any paint you get is a cocktail of different powdered chemicals like iron oxide and aluminum. Forty years ago people would have camped out in their parking lot to get five gallons of the stuff. I will bet a dollar that NASA hasn't even considered this one yet. I am more concerned with making it available to homeowners, though. Would I pay $200 for five gallons? When my income tax return comes in, yes, I would. This stuff would even enhance the fire resistance of aluminum or thin layers of steel. It would make it so that if someone tried to set fire to my toolshed, they'd have a hard time of it.

[Phi for All]

Here's a link to a test done with Fireproof 88 that claims success.

 

What kind of temperatures is the shuttle exposed to?

[Thomas Kirby]

I didn't even think of it as protection for on the way down. One "quick fact" sheet says that it reaches 1650 C, which is way too hot for the paint. I was thinking of it as protection for the external tank on the way up. Maybe it can substitute for that foam that keeps falling off. Hey, I didn't even know that the tank had foam on it until after the Columbia disaster.

 

There are a few hundred degrees to consider from air friction from supersonic flight.

 

They spent over two years trying to solve this one problem, and here we are again, foam is still an unsolved problem. I have no great clues on whether a paint might solve their problem or not. Darn right, if it takes Freon to make it, I will go with Freon. I never believed that Freon damaged the ozone layer anyway. We're also going to be having airplanes dropping out of the sky because lead-free circuit boards will lose components more often.

 

This is one heck of a bind.

[Mokele]

The reason why they don't use it on the shuttle is likely very simple: weight. They actually used to paint the external tank of the shuttle, so everything was white, until they realized they could save 500 pounds of weight by just leaving the orange foam exposed.

 

Mokele

[Thomas Kirby]

I said maybe paint it instead of, not on top of the spray foam. Why do they think that foam like that even could stay on, anyway?

[Mokele]

Well, the foam is there to keep it cold while it's on the launchpad. Does this paint work just as well for preventing cold things from becoming room temperature?

[CPL.Luke]

the foam on the external tank is there to insulate the fuel more than protect it from fire, (the fuel is held at -400 degrees)

[Thomas Kirby]

Actually, the question of whether this can be done with the paint is the one that I am asking. The foam obviously has problems. We are talking about the agency that put men on the moon. You would think they could fund a team to the tune of 100 million dollars to do what it takes to produce a foam that doesn't peel off and doesn't absorb water into it to ice up and flake off. God didn't declare that this had to be a foam, either.

 

An insulating paint along similar lines, and this just occurred to me while I was typing up the essay about the fireproof paint, may be what it takes to make an insulating coating that will not absorb water, will insulate adequately for the mission, and will stay put. For all I know it might even weigh less, especially since it would stay dry. From the sounds of all this, they might have better luck with some of the fancier forms of concrete. Some forms of concrete are more like composite materials, are flexible, won't take up water, are lightweight, insulating, and very strong.

 

If it is taking over 3 years for them to solve a problem that is actually more than 20 years old, someone needs to get on the ball. I personally found it pretty nearly impossible to believe that the SRBs had gaskets between them that could not withstand conditions that were well within the limitations of the artificial rubber used in car tires. It's as if they used unvulcanized rubber. I'm finding it impossible to believe that NASA can't solve this problem in 20 years.

 

I'm thinking that the larger grades of glass microspheres could be combined with the fireproof paint to make it a better insulator that can take the extreme temperatures of supersonic flight. It wouldn't absorb water like foam does. Water condenses in the foam, freezes, expands, and makes the foam peel off. Maybe it wouldn't be as effective a cold keeper as the foam, but it would still be a good thermal break between the tank and the heat of the sun or the heat of supersonic flight. Having to replace more cryogenic fluids is expensive, but it's not as expensive as having the shuttle fleet grounded. It's also not as expensive as losing a ship. That's the choice that NASA is going to have to make unless they can make an insulating foam that doesn't peel off.

 

Maybe we should start a thread about using this to prevent house fires? Like I said, I can't believe that the news isn't all over the place. Every town has had at least one fatal house fire in the last decade or two.

[CPL.Luke]

Actually, the question of whether this can be done with the paint is the one that I am asking. The foam obviously has problems. We are talking about the agency that put men on the moon. You would think they could fund a team to the tune of 100 million dollars to do what it takes to produce a foam that doesn't peel off and doesn't absorb water into it to ice up and flake off. God didn't declare that this had to be a foam, either.

 

nasa's budget aint what it used to be, when nasa went to the moon they employed over 400,000 people directly, even more in terms of private contractors. The current nasa budget is to the tune of 49 billion (has it decreased recently?) with it costing 1.3 billion to launch a shuttle.

 

Also when nasa put men on the moon its goal was to keep costs down, now the government see's nasa almost as a way to discretely bail out the aerospace industry and force them to take on contractors that increase the cost of operationas compared to their competitors

 

An insulating paint along similar lines, and this just occurred to me while I was typing up the essay about the fireproof paint, may be what it takes to make an insulating coating that will not absorb water, will insulate adequately for the mission, and will stay put. For all I know it might even weigh less, especially since it would stay dry. From the sounds of all this, they might have better luck with some of the fancier forms of concrete. Some forms of concrete are more like composite materials, are flexible, won't take up water, are lightweight, insulating, and very strong.

 

the foam is well below the freezing temperature of water because of the fuel that is inside of it, this has occured on every launch vehicle ever made. your paint by your own admission would probably provide less insulation and therefore reach an even colder temperature than the foam. Thus it would have an even thicker coating of ice on the external tank.

 

If it is taking over 3 years for them to solve a problem that is actually more than 20 years old, someone needs to get on the ball. I personally found it pretty nearly impossible to believe that the SRBs had gaskets between them that could not withstand conditions that were well within the limitations of the artificial rubber used in car tires. It's as if they used unvulcanized rubber. I'm finding it impossible to believe that NASA can't solve this problem in 20 years.

 

the original boosters were supposed to be made of a solid tube, but politics intervened and the contract went to a company in the midwest. The distance forced them to consider an SRB that had multiple pieces.

 

I'm thinking that the larger grades of glass microspheres could be combined with the fireproof paint to make it a better insulator that can take the extreme temperatures of supersonic flight. It wouldn't absorb water like foam does. Water condenses in the foam, freezes, expands, and makes the foam peel off. Maybe it wouldn't be as effective a cold keeper as the foam, but it would still be a good thermal break between the tank and the heat of the sun or the heat of supersonic flight. Having to replace more cryogenic fluids is expensive, but it's not as expensive as having the shuttle fleet grounded. It's also not as expensive as losing a ship. That's the choice that NASA is going to have to make unless they can make an insulating foam that doesn't peel off.

 

however if the SSME's take in gas instead of liquid like their supposed to I'm sure that would cause either

A: an explosion

or

B: engine failure costing over 1.3 billion dollars because the mission could not be completed

 

---------------

 

besides the shuttle won't go past 2008 if that long, the CEV is scheduled to start development immediatly after the retirement of the shuttle, and will go into operation in 2014 (sooner if the shuttle is retired earlier)

 

the CEV is relatively expendable (replaced after ten missions, or less) and it will ride on top of the booster instead of along side it, this will remove the entire threat of foam insulation.

[jdurg]

Looking at the MSDS of that fireproof paint, there's a lot of little fiberglass and other slicate based compounds in there. Those things aren't good to get into your lungs. The application of the paint wouldn't pose too much of a problem, but if you then sanded it off later you'd be putting a lot of fiberglass and silicate particles into the air. It would be kind of akin to asbestos. Remember, lead paint really doesn't pose a problem at all during application of when it's on the wall. It's when the paint is 'messed with' that you get a problem.

[Thomas Kirby]

Looking at the MSDS of that fireproof paint, there's a lot of little fiberglass and other slicate based compounds in there. Those things aren't good to get into your lungs. The application of the paint wouldn't pose too much of a problem, but if you then sanded it off later you'd be putting a lot of fiberglass and silicate particles into the air. It would be kind of akin to asbestos. Remember, lead paint really doesn't pose a problem at all during application of when it's on the wall. It's when the paint is 'messed with' that you get a problem.

 

These things aren't anything that we aren't already used to handling. People routinely sand fiberglass repairs on cars. Also, there is a system for removing paint that uses solvents that as far as we know are not harmful. Outside of directly breathing non-water-soluble silicates into the lungs, they are not particularly hazardous and are fairly biologically inert. Lead on the other hand, well, we already know about lead. So you don't sand it off if you are worried. Most likely if it needs any fixing people will just paint another layer over the old one. They're not going to repaint any of the wood behind the walls. What's stupid about regular gypsum wallboard is that although the gypsum won't support combustion, the paper it is stuck to will, and the cheap stuff breathes and is fairly fragile. Impregnate the paper with a substance that can withstand 2,000 degrees, it isn't going to burn. People routinely paint wallboard by adding layers, not by sanding old layers off. The places that you even might have to worry about that are on fancy wooden floors or walls.

 

If I remember correctly, the fear of asbestos started over questions of a chance in a million or a few chances in a million that asbestos might cause cancer. Some people say that the odds of getting cancer from a CAT scan are one on one hundred, and the chart of acceptable radiation exposures gives chances of something like one in thirty-one.

 

One thing I wanted to mention, that I logged in for, is that it just occurred to me that paint over the foam could keep the moisture out. I don't think that a consistently closed-cell foam is possible in a spray-on type. I think that moisture gets in through the foam and condenses and then freezes inside the foam. This is very elementary stuff, by the way. Styrofoam is actually molded and the molding process seals the surface. If the spray-on foam is kept dry and maybe also kept hot, it can be painted with very little moisture inside the foam. It may indeed take five hundred pounds of paint to cover the foam, but that tank has a solid fraction of an acre in surface area. The moisture that can condense in the foam weighs a lot more than five hundred pounds. Heck, the moisture that can settle on there from rain probably weights more than five hundred pounds. That also, by the way, can get into the foam.

[CPL.Luke]

actually the foam still does have a primer on it and that probably does keep the water out.

 

also nasa has only had this problem since 1997 when they switched to non-freon foam

[Thomas Kirby]

So our astronauts were killed by political correctness.

[CPL.Luke]

yep pretty much wouldn't be the first time people died because technology wasn't politically correct, in all countries

[Thomas Kirby]

Just for some of the audience: I say that something is a crock because I personally believe it is a crock, not because it's some popular bandwagon thingamamoron or whatever. I see a world of difference between something that has a one in a million chance of causing cancer and something that has a one in thirty chance of causing cancer. Also, I can't see that using a Freon-based foam to cover the external tank of the space shuttle is going to be any danger to the environment, even if Freon were a danger to the environment, which is something else that I don't believe. There's probably less freon in that much expanding foam than there is in one home air conditioning system that sits broken in a trailer park and leaking freely. And we're going to have an airplane somewhere falling out of the sky because the manufacturers of its circuit boards are no longer allowed to use lead which, if you really think about it, is effectively less toxic than the doses of pink liquid that kids take for tummy aches. (If any of these branching issues want to take off, please let us make a conscious effort to open new threads.)

 

I don't even know how it is that a non-freon-based foam can't stay together the way that a freon-based foam can, but if there were a way, they would have found it by now.

 

A connected issue that may still be somewhat on topic is why was it not until this year that they came up with ways to work on the shuttle in orbit? What kind of completely cockeyed and drugged-up optimist ever thought that, knowing that those tiles fall off every time they launch, that they could always safely re-enter the atmosphere at Mach 22 without even being able to look and see if they had holes in the wings? This sounds like material for a comedy monologue for Jeff Foxworthy. It ain't funny. Even I could probably design something that would do the job. Design something that can be worked from an open cargo bay that can lift a camera around and scan the underside. I'd want that before the first launch. Somehow it reminds me of those ships they had on that one "space marines" show on the Sci-Fi channel. Their Ticonderoga was designed pretty much like a typical sea-going battleship. It had no effective armaments or even a visible viewport on its bottom side. The enemy is going to be polite and always approach from the side that has the weapons mounted on it? Or we just assume that the armor on the bottom can deflect projectiles that are travelling at a solid fraction of the speed of light? Anyway, if you can't work on the underside of your vehicle, and you can't even look at the underside of it, you are in grave danger if you try to hit the atmosphere like a flying brick trying to smash into a mountain and slide down the side of it without being shattered or broken. If you can't protect your undercarriage... We already know the rest of that story.

[CPL.Luke]

actually two things nasa is exempt from the restriction on freon they just made a conscious effort to comply with the regulations

 

 

and freon has a proven effect on the ozone layer, and by your logic they should take away all of the regulations on smog emissions from factories because open pete fires produce a bunch of it to.

 

there are probably several reasons why nasa hasn't produced good procedures for repairing the underside of the shuttle, one of them would be the what can you do about it argument. There are thousands of things that can go wrong n a shuttle mission, the computer could fail- or any other one of the millions of parts on a shuttle. To plan for each of these would be nearly impossible. Not to mention the fact that no space flight has ever had a safety procedure for a heat shield failure

 

 

 

 

back on topic though the fire proof paint that you mention probably only does its job by being heat tolerant up to about 500-600 degrees, and then serving to seal the wood from oxygen. You have not shown any evidence to suggest that the paint is actually a good insulator against heat as well.

[Thomas Kirby]

The evidence is actually in plain view, Cpl. Luke. First, the tests show that the paint is able to resist 2,000 degrees F, about 1093 C, for two hours. If the wood behind that paint is not emitting gasses, charring, being eaten away behind that paint, we can take an educated guess from real-world evidence that not very much of that heat is getting to the wood. Wood emits flammable volatiles at temperatures less than 500 degrees F.

 

I would like to see the results if someone places temperature sensors behind this paint. I think that it refuses heat by being a very efficient radiator, a lot like the shuttle tiles. That does mean that its ability to refuse heat increases with the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the heat source. It would be a lot better for refusing heat from the sun that from the air. One thing that I think it is able to do is greatly reduce the amount of heat that insulation behind it is exposed to.

[CPL.Luke]

what tests showed that?

 

if your reffering to the ones here http://wcco.com/specialreports/local_story_310181624.html

 

the fire retardant paint is only capable of slowing the fire, and considering that the fires were started without the use of an accelerant the odds are the fire wasn't hotter than 600 degrees

 

I would also imagine that in there "extensive testing" they only tested the paint applied over a material that had a high temperature tolerance like steel, if it truly could insulate against those temperatures as is claimed I think it would make a far bigger splash than it has.

 

The space shuttle tiles also insulate by having a very high specific heat and also conducting heat poorly.

 

if it were an efficient radiator it would glow :/

[Thomas Kirby]

Firefree 88

 

Check out the site. They have the results of numerous tests that prove that the paint applied over wood or gypsum board resists 2000 degrees F for 2 hours. They have done side by side tests of treated and untreated structures too. They have a long list of certifications of actual tests according to Fire Industry standards. The fact that this material protects wood from 2000 degree heat for 2 hours has been exhaustively proven. It has even been tested on foam panels. I personally find it hard to believe that this stuff can protect foam panels from melting. I would like to see the egg test tried with this material. Paint an egg, hold a torch to it, and see if the egg coagulates inside.

 

One potential problem is that this paint expands when heated. That might cause flaking, it might not. It might also mean that it won't deflect heat well at lower temperatures.

 

Who says that it doesn't glow when heated?

[CPL.Luke]

I would find an extra source other than the manufacturers web site

 

I know of several magnetic bracelets that are "scientifically proven" to cure cancer

 

I also know of certain companies that put cocaine in soda's and marketed them as cure-alls

 

but also who said that it did glow?

[Thomas Kirby]

One thing that makes it more credible is the fact that they reference organizations that don't like it when their names are taken in vain. Another is that you can google "Fireproof 88" and find agency reports about the approved uses of this material and the tests that it has passed. One of the agency reports I found is dated 1997.

[CPL.Luke]

when I googled it without quotations I got only results that were located at firefree.com. With quotations I got only 3 meaningless results, I was unable to succesfully navigate any of the site for the companies that they mention in order to find the report

 

if you could link the report you found it would be appreciated

 

 

also if the report you found is dated from 1997 doesn't that tell you something about the fact that this stuff isn't used everywhere and therefore can't be as effective as they claim

 

for instance there website tries to make the users make the connection that if firefree 88 was in use at the WTC then the towers wouldn't have come down :/

[jdurg]

One thing to remember about the space shuttle, which most people seem to just ignore, is that the shuttle is exposed to outrageously cold temperatures in space. Outer space isn't a room temperature paradise. It is brutally cold out there. While it's nice that this paint can withstand high temperatures, if it can't tolerate the cold temperatures then it will be just as usefull as wrapping the shuttle in saran wrap. Outside the Earth's atmosphere there is an insanely high amount of cosmic radiation and temperature extremes. If you're facing the sun, then the temperatures you're exposed to are quite high. When you are no longer facing the sun, the temperatures plummet to frighteningly low levels. The paint would have to be able to withstand this constant flip-flop of temperatures out there. Plus, it would have to be able to withstand the insanely high temperatures experienced when going into outer space and then when coming back in.

 

As for using it in place of the insulating foam, that's a bit risky. All of the 'testing' that has been linked to has been room temperature testing. Things behave a LOT differently at sub-zero temperatures. I have not seen one test where this paint has been subjected to liquid nitrogen temperatures and then still performed at the same level. What if this paint cracks at those temperatures or suddenly becomes a very good heat transfer agent at low temperatures? That would lead to critical failure and the loss of life. You can't just add it on top of whatever's there already because mass is such a crucial part of a space flight. You need to make the craft as light as possible in order to escape the Earth's gravity. Any excess mass, no matter how small, requires a large amount of rocket fuel in order to propel it out into space. So adding on a mere 500 pounds of this paint, which isn't guaranteed to work in outer space conditions, is just a huge risk to add on to an already risky project.