Not sure of the cause of the limitation for Dragon, but Soyuz’s 200-day lifespan as a lifeboat for the ISS is limited by the hydrogen peroxide in the attitude thrusters. Peroxide spontaneously decomposes to water and oxygen which means the thrusters would gradually lose power. So the limit is set well before too much…

The good news is that there aren’t any radioactive power sources on this probe. The bus was powered by solar panels and the lander itself relied on batteries as the surface of Venus is quite dim because of the scattering and reflection of light by high-altitude clouds.

I know it’s early - but will this be Netflix’s next big Oscar push? The cast and director are perfect award bait.

New advertising slogan: ‘From their wattles to yours’.

‘Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President,’

Former pilot Gwyn Mullet held the subsonic transatlantic record for many years in a Super VC-10. He wrote:

Spring must be coming - Miller’s hairline has moved a long way north since the last time he was on camera.

Jay Leno can help you with that question:

They work really well on a small range of routes - especially the Europe - Persian Gulf - Far East/Australia route. There’s a reason Emirates have 100 or so of these monsters.

I was amazed how well the Beyond Burger can pass for meat. It’s got the texture and the taste of an okay burger, but as you say not a premium burger.

I wonder if the Hawker-Siddeley Trident ever did it? The Trident 1 could happily nip along at Mach 0.96. It could also deploy its thrust reversers in flight and drop 4,000m per minute. Not sure the passengers would have liked it though...

It is true.

I lived in Cornwall at the far South Western tip of England and we used to get the BAA-DUUM! of the Air France Concorde about 9pm each tonight as she decelerated towards Charles de Gaulle. The windows would shake a little and the world seemed nicely futuristic.

Apparently it was utterly imperceptible - not even the champagne rippled. The only way to tell was to watch the Machmeter at the front of the cabin.

Using its four afterburning jet engines (yes, afterburning, just like on a fighter jet or a B-1B bomber) it could comfortably cruise above Mach 2, or around 1,340 mph at its cruising altitude of 60,000 feet.

I really like the N1, it is colossal, brutal and a tragedy it never worked.

And to think they had an airliner version of this beast, the Tu-114; the fastest turboprop airliner ever built - screaming (literally) along at 870kmh.

Great advice - putting aside a book you can’t enjoy might be hard, especially if it was a gift, or it was expensive or if it is one of those ‘100 books you must read’ titles. But I am much happier now I’ve got into the habit of saying ‘Enough!’

My advice - don’t keep ploughing through a book if you don’t like it (unless it’s for class). Just because “War and Peace’ is generally regarded as a masterpiece of fiction doesn’t mean you have to read it. If you aren’t enjoying a book, put it aside and choose something else, there’s lots to choose from. Maybe you’ll…

There’s a new Randy Rainbow video: