If only gravity were working, the path would be symmetrical, it is the wind resistance that produces the tragic curve.
Through the years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt.
The great weight of the ship may indeed prevent her from acquiring her greatest velocity; but when she has attained it, she will advance by her own intrinsic motion, without gaining any new degree of velocity, or lessening what she has acquired.
Certainly, I want to be the first through the sound barrier in a car.
To fly, we have to have resistance. It's all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.
The winning concept is the slow-down approach, in which we use a parachute anchor to slow down the system as much as possible, allowing the natural winds and waves to push the plastic into the system.
Aerodynamics is mathematics for those who haven't learned to do calculus. In my case, too, for one who hasn't learned to add or multiply, at least the first time.
If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you've got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly.
