The Energia rocket was going to be partially reusable. The four boosters were intended to parachute back to Earth but this was never tested. A second design using pop out wings that would let them glide back to a runway was also proposed, but never implemented.

Here is your original Space Shuttle and its giant booster in all of its late 1960s glory. 2000 tonnes, 102m tall, 11 rocket engines and four engines on the booster.

There was a mortifying documentary a couple of years back on the UK’s Channel 4 about the workings of the US embassy here in London as Johnson came in.

With Tenet they should be really clever and release it last year...

Warhorses like the Destrier from the Middle Ages are also something of a mystery.

I find it hard to believe an electric fence would stop a Cornishman from getting to his pint. Landmines might be necessary.

It’s British and purple so it is either blackcurrant flavour or tastes like Vimto.

‘13 Minutes to the Moon’ by the BBC World Service about Apollo 13 has been utterly gripping featuring expert commentary, interviews with crew members and people at Mission Control and a score by Hans Zimmer:

I always find it sobering to buy travel insurance to visit the US and find a typical figure covered is $20 million. I’ve never had to worry much about health costs here in the UK beyond dental and optical charges and paying a fixed fee of about £10 for a prescription item.

Isn’t Finland the part of Russia where they rake the forests?

Surely the only acceptable thing we want from this is - ‘All-American Roadtrip’? 

Believe it or not - NASA seriously looked at a fly-back Saturn S-1C (the first stage) during the Shuttle development process. They would have added jets and delta wings to the booster allowing it to swoop down and land on a runway. It looked - precarious:

The back is definitely the best view of the Allegro Estate - from the front, well it is all kinds of 1970s ugly, even before the various bits of trim fell off, the paint faded to a weird deep pink and rust sprouted everywhere.

Icelandair has traditionally been a seasonal cargo carrier. In winter, when few people want to go to Iceland (can’t think why, it’s delightful at -20C), they take the seats out of many of their planes and send them off around the world to haul cargo.

Ooooh Steve Martin references...

Erik Larsen’s new book ‘The Splendid and the Vile’. Larsen is a stunning writer who specialises in telling history in a near literary style. This book is about the appointment of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister shortly after the outbreak of World War II just before the collapse of France and the Battle of Britain.…

In a bizarre way that makes him even more like Rupert Murdoch who not only lost a fortune buying MySpace, but last year sold off his satellite TV empire in Europe to Comcast in order to concentrate on dead-tree media.

Slight correction - the Duchess was a six-engined jet-powered flying boat for 74 passengers. The Queen was the insanely big follow-on to the Duchess that never made it beyond a few sketches.

Saunders-Roe had some terrible luck. One of their other projects was the 1955 SR177 - a combined jet and rocket powered interceptor which outperformed every plane in the World (Mach 2.3, brake release to 20,000m in 4 minutes).

‘But there is little mining of key ingredients like lithium, and no capacity to turn those resources into high quality vehicle batteries.’