Excellent words from uber Dave.. As a bloke that's spent most of my life around huge aircraft I've been on board shifting ballast around to keep things trimmed. And lost count of the times we've had to fly over the sea, dumping fuel so that we could get back to land due to a problem.
And I can assure you that dumping 80 tons of fuel leaves a fantastic trail as the suns setting..lol.. Non of it ever reaches the ground by the way.
And on a side note.. I was sitting in a bar in Washington a few years ago..and a TV behind the bar was showing a documentary on an area of the US famous for fossils and where you can see the foot prints of Dinosaurs from when they walked on what was once soft ground.. I said to my friend that I'd love to see that.. Too which an American who was nothing to do with us piped up with.. "There's no such thing as Dinosaurs.. god put them bones there to test our faith"... WTF..
