The science behind the Red Bull plane swap

Whatever you think of the stunt itself, with one plane crashing and the FAA revoking both pilots' certificates [1], this is a really interesting article about the speed brake they developed to allow the planes to go into a vertical dive at the speed of a skydiver.

Do watch the video at the top of the page. It is a great discussion about an unusual engineering challenge.

(While scrolling though the page, I noticed that the photos were all low resolution. But after I went back to the top and scrolled again they came up OK.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31359025