They were a big lump. If they needed to use the burners, on takeoff, because they were heavily loaded, they would have to refuel in flight, to be able to do any decent length mission.
It didn’t fly, as much as get pushed around by the engines. Glides like a copter, ie, a rock.
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The blurb:
On January 1 New Horizons encountered the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. Some 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, Ultima Thule is the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft from Earth. This historic image, the highest resolution image released so far, was made at a range of about 28,000 kilometers only 30 minutes before the New Horizons closest approach.
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Greetings Voyager Thule!
We hope you will be carrying golden records. No prog, rap or C&W, please. 
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I dream about having a lottery win HiFi fund and being able to tour dealers listening to kit, buying and selling at will. Multiple systems and rooms. I’d still buy second hand.
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Good thinking. The Kingdom Royals are going to add nothing to the price of a used yacht. 
That will keep the dealers in business.
If no one buys new kit (especially lottery winners) there won’t be any dealers to tour.
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I’d have so much kit there’d be HiFi shops opening on every street.
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Anyone know their address A begging letter wouldn’t go amiss
Who’s sent one
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New phone stage case?
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For the discerning chicken.
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We saw a lot of that type of jointing on old buildings in China. The story the guides tell at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing is that during the Japanese occupation before and during WWII they took a fancy to the enormous wooden Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and decided to relocate it to Japan. But despite trying long and hard they never did work out how to get the wooden joints apart and in the end they gave up and left it where it was.
VB
I’m sure I watched a programme about that type of building being earthquake proof by dint of the clever joints at its base. A degree of movement was allowed for.
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I have a couple of books on Japanese joinery and some of the joints are mind bogglingly complicated.
What an awesome beastie 
There is a guy in Kyoto who has a business in taking apart traditional structure and rebuilding them or preserving them but he is one of only a few who has the knowledge of the traditional joinery methods to do do, as Paul says the joints are very complicated almost like a knot, you have to know how to unpick it.
The Pagodas were made from wood and have proved earthquake resistant (5 story pagodas can be 55m tall), a few were destroyed by fire but none through earthquakes and many were built in the 1600’s.
There is a central pillar and the individual stories built around it but independently so the pillar shakes in balance with the surrounding structures like a dancer keeps balance. Amazingly there were no blueprints for these structures, the temple would contact a master carpenter and then a 1/10 model would be made his assistants which could take 2 to 3 years. The pagodas were exact replicas of these models and each part would be individually made to perfection and fitted with a part number.
Tokyos sky tree operates on the same principal (central pillar) but is 634m tall! It stayed relatively un phased by the earthquake in 2011.
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What a fascinating post. Thanks.
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