The maximum load for the brake parachutes has been fixed: Nine tonnes of drag sounds like a lot, but it's really not much to stop a five-tonne car from 1, 000mph.

But it was a birdlike tail that really amped up the aerodynamics, dampening the drag from the body and wings, as well as boosting the lift that lags under vehicle weight and cargo load.

The poems are wonderfully free of the drag and load of overbearing and perfectly useless detail with which so many second-rate biographies are stuffed to the gills.