I always have wondered what happened to Starlite, the fire-retardant paint; I seem to remember seeing it on Tomorrow's World (BBC) long ago, but then it vanished, like so many of the other odd innovations on that show.

I remember seeing a show about Starlite. If it worked as advertised, it might have been bought up to keep it off the civilian market due to its military applications. For example, if Starlite worked as advertised, it would make it simple to develop reentry heat shields for long range missiles. Heat shields are a tough engineering challenge, so anything that made it easy could also make it easier for countries like North Korea or Iran to make long range missiles.

Again, if Starlite worked as advertised (and that's a big "if"), the inventor probably received a nice cash settlement and the technology is being applied to various weapons programs.